History of Wake County, North Carolina : with sketches of those who have most influenced its development

THE LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF

NORTH CAROLINA

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

ALEXANDER B. ANDREWS

Class of 1893

TRUSTEE OF THE UNIVERSITY

FRIEND OF THE LIBRARY

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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

HISTORY

OF

WAKE COUNTY

NORTH CAROLINA

WITH SKETCHES OF THOSE WHO HAVE
MOST INFLUENCED ITS DEVELOPMENT

BY

HOPE SUMMERELL CHAMBERLAIN

Pen and Ink Illustrations

BY THE Author

Edwards & Broughton Printing Company

Raleigh, N. C.

1922

Copyright, 1922

BY

Mrs. William Johnston Andrews

Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews

This Book
is dedicated to the memory of
our late beloved chairman

Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews
(Julia Martha Johnston)

BY

The Wake County Committee of the

North Carolina Society of

Colonial Dames of America

under whose auspices

IT is written and

PRINTED

Author's Dedication

O her just pride in her own colo-
nial ancestry, Mrs. Alexander
Boyd Andrews (Julia Martha
Johnston) added a strong inter-
est in the early history of her
State. From the tradition of Mecklenburg
where she was born, she came to be intensely
interested in the annals of Wake, her adoptive
County, and in the development of Raleigh,
where she lived to be a blessing to all who
knew her.

She was a patriot, as well as a Christian
wife and mother; she loved the inspiration of
old days, as well as the new friends she found
everywhere. She was honored by being chosen
as Vice-Regent from North Carolina of Mount
Vernon Ladies Association. Often during her
lifetime she recommended to the writer of
this book the writing of a history of Wake
County as a worthy work for this Committee
of the North Carolina Society of Colonial
Dames in America.

Thus this book becomes a memorial to her
friendship and to her ideals, a sincere labor

[9]

CO

10 AUTHOR S DEDICATION

of love undertaken at her often expressed de-
sire. It pictures the community she loved.
It embodies the interests of that Committee
which came into activity under her leadership.
It is the fittest monument to her worth and
dignity that we can raise. May she know
that we remember and feel that we still
love her, and approve of our dedication to her
of the book she inspired.

^^

Contents

CHAPTER I
Introductory

Introductory Paragraph — Lawson, Explorer, 1700 — Journey
through the Carolinas — Visit to Falls of "News Creek" — Possibly
traversed what is now Wake County — Granville Tobacco Path —
Beginnings in North Carolina — Causes of great love of Liberty —
Poor Government of Lords Proprietors — Locke's Fundamental
Constitutions — Geographical and Topographical Conditions — Inde-
pendence of Settlers — Col. Byrd's libel of Settlers — Good character
of same — Growth of Settlements in North Carolina — Wake existed
as parts of Johnston and Orange Counties in 1765 — Tryon's Admin-
istration as Governor — Contrast between East and West of Colony —
Tryon's Palace at New Berne — Grievances of Different Sections —
The Regulators War — Tryon's Expedition against Regulators —
Setting off of four New Counties in 1771, of which the Fourth was
Wake — Tryon's Camp at Hunter's Lodge in Wake County, spring
of 1771 — Laying off of Rhamkatt Road — Naming of Wake County
— Esther Wake, Margaret Wake, Lady Tryon — Derivation of Terri-
tory of Wake — Position in State — Soil — Products — Elevation —
Climate — Streams — Raleigh Capital City and County Seat.

CHAPTER H
The First Twenty-Five Years

Tryon's March from Wake to Alamance — The Quelling of the
Regulators — Rapid Growth of Revolutionary sentiment — Thomas
Jefferson's Tribute — 1772, First Court held in Wake — Wake Cross
Roads — Bloomsbury — Source of Name — Joel Lane's Tavern —
"First Capitol" — Inscription on Tablet — Supplies furnished by Joel
Lane — Inauguration of Gov, Thomas Burke — His Inaugural Ad-
dress— Sketch of Burke's Life — Burke Square — Interval between
Yorktown and 1789 — Location of New Capital — Discussed in In-

12 CONTENTS

tervals of Debates about the Ratification of the Federal Constitu-
tion— Account of Debate on Location of Capital — Wake County-
Site voted Aug, 2, 1788 — Pros and Cons — Constitution Ratified
1789 — Wake County Site Confirmed 1791 — Willie Jones and Com-
missioners— Joel Lane's Tract — Laying Off of Streets — Price of
Tract, etc. — Description of City Plan — Names of Streets — Park
System — First Sale of City Lots — Building of State House.

CHAPTER III
Early Worthies

Number of Inhabitants of Wake County in 1800 — Character of
Settlers — General Mode of Life in 1800 — Cotton — Transportation
— Tobacco — Corn — Wheat — Live Stock — Homes — Vehicles —
Horseback Riding — Amusements — Look of Country — Mode of Liv-
ing of Settlers — Easy Success — Slavery — Schools — Stores and Tav-
erns— Court Week — Religious Services — Discontent with Primitive
Conditions — Prominent Citizens of Wake — John Hinton and De-
scendants— Theophilus Hunter and Descendants — Joel Lane and
Brothers — Story of Lane's Scheming — ^Two Jones Families of Wake
— Kinship with Allen and Willie Jones — Mingling of Blood of
First Families of Wake — Fanning Jones the Tory — Dr. Calvin Jones
of Wake Forest — Names of Taxpayers of Wake, i8cxD — Same
Names to-day.

CHAPTER IV
Raleigh The Capital Village

Colonel Creecy's Description of Raleigh in 1800 — Old Sassafras
Tree — Governor Ashe, 1795, — FirstGovernor Residing in Raleigh —
First Governor's Mansion — Joel Lane House — Andrew Johnson
House — Academy — (Old Lovejoy's) Begun 1802 — Female Depart-
ment 1807 — Additions — Curriculum — Dr.McPheeters — Other Early
Schools of Wake — John Chavis — Presentation of Globes to Univer-
sity of North Carolina by Matrons of Raleigh — The old "Palace"
or Governor's Mansion at Foot of Fayetteville Street — Community
Life of Old Raleigh — Plays — Processions — Speakings — Banquets —

CONTENTS 13

Census of Raleigh in March, 1807 — City Government — City Watch,
181 1 — Art Treasure of Old State House — Story of Canova's Statue
of Washington — Fourth of July Celebration, 1809 — Subsequent
Celebrations — First Church Edifices — List of Subjects for Further
Interest in Raleigh History.

CHAPTER V
Early Life and Thought

Forgetting the New Necessary to Understanding of Old — Politics
— Economics — Definition of Democracy — Federalists — Jeffersonians
— Warring Ideals, French and English — Andrew Jackson — Political
Change in North Carolina — State Banks — "Tippecanoe and Tyler
Too" — Henry Clay — Old Whigs — Backwardness ofjEducation — The
Western Fever — Discussions of Slavery — New England's Didacti-
cism— Internal Improvements — Canals — High Cost of Living, 1 82 1 —
Stage Coach Travel — Newspapers — The Gales — Raleigh "Register"
— "The Standard" — Scarcity of Books — Food in Raleigh — Furniture
— Fashions — Table Ware — Housewives, Duties — The Unmanage-
able Young Folks of the Twenties and Thirties.

CHAPTER VI
Giants of Those Days

Col. William Polk— The Old State Bank— Colonel Polk on Duel-
ing (Alfred Jones Duel) — Colonel Polk Beats an Old Neighbor — His
Dancing — His Son Leonidas — His Friend and his Cousin and his
Bank Janitor — Sketch of William Boylan — Invention of Cotton Gin
— Mr. Boylan's Kind Heart — His Home, Wakefield — Peter Brown
— Practising Lawyer — His Return to Raleigh — ^Judge Seawell —
Moses Mordecai — William Peck — Anecdote of State Bank Days —
Young R. S. Tucker — Dr. William McPheeters — Disciplinarian —
Peace Brothers — Joseph Gales and Mrs. Winifred Gales his Wife —
DavidL. Swain — HisLife — HisHistoricalWork — Mentionof Familiar
Characters in the Raleigh of His Time.

14 CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII
More Biographies

Noticeof John Marshall — Anecdote of his Stay in Raleigh — Refer-
ence to Him from Governor Swain — Quotation by Judge Badger —
Judge Gaston — Influence on Constitutional Con ventionof 1 83 ^ — Last
Religious Disability Removed by Influence of William Johnston —
Gaston's Eloquence — His Piety — John Haywood, State Treasurer —
Other Members of the Haywood Family — ^John Haywood's Friendly
Ways — Popularity — Devotion to University of North Carolina —
Funeral Eulogy — Judge Badger — Youthful Ability — Many Honors
— Battle Family — Duncan Cameron — His Buildings — Leonidas K.
Polk (Fighting Bishop) — Brigadier-General in Confederate Army —
His Life, Services as Bishop and as Soldier — Brave Death.

CHAPTER VIII
Improvements and Progress

Stimulus of Loss — Burning of the Old State House — Destruction
of Statue of Washington — Other Alarms of Fire — Miss Betsy Geddy
— Controversy over New Capitol — Judge Gaston's Influence — Ap-
propriation for New Capitol — Building Committees — Corner Stone,
July 4, 1833 — Same Day, Railroad Plan — Final Cost of Capitol —
Its Material — Its Designers and Builders — Method of Moving Stone
for Capitol — Mrs. Sarah Hawkins Polk and Her Street Cars — Spirit-
ed Raleigh Women — Poor Fire Protection — Hunter's Pond — Descrip-
tion from Petersburg Paper — Eagerness for Railroad in North Caro-
lina— Capitol Finished — Railroad Comes In — Great Double Cele-
bration— Described by Witness — Early Engines, Tracks and Cars
— Time Table — Breath of Progress.

CHAPTER IX
The Middle Years

Rapid Progress — Establishment of Capital as Center, Political and
Social — General Prosperity — Plantation Homes — Mexican War —

CONTENTS 15

Discovery of Gold in California — Effect on Men's Minds— Cheerful
Temper — Great Political Campaign Waged in Wake — Educational
Interest— Saint Mary's School— Wake Forest College — Free School
— Growth of Population — Increase of Luxury — Of Fashion — Dress
and Food — Advantage of Railroads though Despatched Without
Telegraphs — Interest in Farming Methods — Culture — Reading —
Discord over Slavery — Rift Growing Wider — Differing Opinions in
Raleigh — Old Heads — Hot Young Hearts — The Actual Secession —
After — The Surrender of the Capital as Narrated by Governor
Swain — The "End of an Era."

CHAPTER X
Our Benefactors

Five Citizens — One Stranger— A Woman — John Rex the Tanner
and his Bequest for a Hospital — Intention not Fully Realized and
why — William Peace and Peace Institute — Dorothea Dix — Sketch
of Life — Story of Founding of State Hospital for Insane — Stanhope
Pullen — His Peculiarities — His Business Success — His Gifts: to City,
to State, to State College for Women — John Pullen: Charitable,
Consecrated — His Example — His Remarkable Funeral — R. B.
Rainey— His Gift of Library to City — His Modesty— The Real
Meaning of his Gift.

CHAPTER XI
Distinguished Visitors

General Lafayette — Henry Clay — President James K. Polk —
President Buchanan — General Joseph Lane — Stephen A. Douglas —
Mrs. Jefferson Davis — President Andrew Johnson — President Theo-
dore Roosevelt — Woodrow Wilson, Just Before Becoming Candidate
for the Presidency — Vice-President Sherman — Vice-President Mar-
shall— State Literary and Historical Speakers — Edwin Markham —
James Bryce — Henry Cabot Lodge — ^Jules Jusserand — Ex-President
Taft — Frenchmen of the High Commission during World War —
General Tyson — Dorothea Dix Several Times — Dr. Anna Howard
Shaw — ^Miss Rankin the First Congresswoman.

16 CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII
These Later Days

Life Story of a Nation — ^Wm. L. Saunders and Colonial Records
— Self-Consciousness in History Comes Later — Early Manufactur-
ing— Hand-loom Products — Home Dyes — Women's Handicrafts —
Early Before-the-war Cotton Factories — None in Wake — Cotton
Gins in Wake — Cotton-seed Oil made in Wake Before the War —
Pianos made in Raleigh — Paper Mills in Wake: Joseph Gales' and
Royster's — Disposal of Latter Mill — Agricultural Methods — ^War-
time Impetus to Manufacturing — Home Work Given Out to
Country Women — Sewing — Knitting — Manufactures in Raleigh
for Confederacy — Powder — Guncaps — Cartridges — Matches —
Curry-combs — Metal Findings — John Brown Pikes — Wooden Shoes
— Cotton Cloth Found in Devereux Mansion — Cotton Cultiva-
tion— Reconstruction Period — Priestley Mangum and Man gum
Terrace — Developed More Perfectly — Walter Page — State Chroni-
cle— ^Watauga Club — Agricultural and Mechanical College — Growth
of Manufactures in Raleigh — Rural Free Delivery — Progress all
over Wake County.

H

CHAPTER I

Introductory

T is difficult to realize beginnings.
Let us turn back the stream of
time, let us look at our old famil-
iar places in the light of former
days. No one has stepped twice
in the same river, and its onward flow changes
all shores.

Who has not said to himself, as he passed
along famihar streets and considered familiar

landmarks, — .77,7

"I wish Id seen

The many towns this town has been.''

So it is with this country we live in and pos-
sess. When we go abroad upon the hilly
roads of this pleasant inland County of Wake,
when we note the outlines of its ridges agamst
the sky, and see field and forest and farm, and
scenes of man's long residence, we often wish
to think backward and perceive clearly these
old well-known scenes with the eyes of the
first European explorers as they threaded

[17]

18 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

their way through forest glades, peopled at
that time only by the red men.

The first historian of North Carolina, the
explorer Lawson, although known to have
passed through the central part of this State,
cannot actually be proved to have trod the
soil of Wake County. One authority on our
local history thinks that he did, and indeed it
seems more than possible.

Lawson made a journey through western
and middle Carolina in the year seventeen
hundred or thereabout. His course was a long
loop coming out of South Carolina and cross-
ing the Catawba and the ''Realkin" (or Yad-
kin) and other streams, continuing in a north-
easterly direction and then due east, until he
finally reached the settlements of the North
Carolina seaboard. His descriptive travel-
ler's journal reads as fresh and as crisply In-
teresting as if penned last year, and we get the
impression of a writer alert in every sense and
perception. He was a fine optimistic fellow,
and though he was hired no doubt to praise
the new colony, and so draw In settlers from
among the readers of his account, yet no one
can close his book without the feeling that he

INTRODUCTORY 19

too, like many another coming to North Car-
olina to live, soon fell in love with the climate,
and delighted to bask under the sunny sky.

Hear his account of leaving ''Acconeechy
Town" (which must have been near Hills-
borough), and marching twenty miles east-
ward over "stony rough ways" till he reached
"a mighty river." '^This river is as large as
the Realkin, the south bank having tracts of
good land, the banks high, and stone quarries.
We got then to the north shore, which is poor
white sandy soil with scrubby oaks. We went
ten miles or so, and sat down at the falls of a
large creek where lay mighty rocks, the water
making a strange noise as of a great many
water wheels at once. This I take to be the
falls of News Creek, called by the Indians
We-Quo-Whom."

For a first trip through an unknown wilder-
ness, guided only by a compass, this suggests
the neighborhood, and describes the granite
ridges that traverse Wake County, and pro-
duce the Falls of Neuse, where the river flows
across one of these barriers.

During the next days' travel he comments
on the land ''abating of its height" and ''mixed

20 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

with pines and poor soil." This, too,
makes it sound as if he perceived the swift
transition which may be seen in the eastern
part of Wake County from one zone to the
next, from the hard-wood growth to the pine
timber, and from a clay to a sandy soil.

Lawson highly praised the midland of North
Carolina, between the sandy land and the
mountains, and it is pleasant to read his en-
thusiastic account of this home of ours, and
learn the impression it made on a good observ-
er in its pristine state, and before the white
man's foot had become familiar with the long
trading path, which must have crossed west,
near this section, but not certainly in the exact
longitude of Wake County.

This trail is known to have passed Hills-
borough, and to have crossed Haw River at
the Haw Fields. It may well have followed
the same course, as later did the Granville
Tobacco Path, which certainly traversed
Wake County near Raleigh.

Wake County was one of the latest of the
pre-Revolutionary counties to be set off from
the rest, and its boundaries were not in any
sense natural boundaries, dependent upon

INTRODUCTORY

21

natural barriers or the course of streams, but
were run and divided for purely political
reasons.

The story of the making and naming of
Wake County is an interesting one, and prop-
erly to tell it requires some general account of
the Colony of North Carolina and its begin-
nings.

The first settlement of the Carolinas was
begun under the charter of a company of
English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors. If
these owners received their quit-rents as speci-
fied, they did not take much further interest
in their plantations, nor molest the settlers;
hence, the northern colony, being so neglected
and more isolated, was ever the freest of all
the Old Thirteen; one might even say the
freest and easiest of them. Having no good
harbor, and hidden behind the sand-bars from
the storms of Hatteras, it enjoyed its immun-
ity. Not being easily reached from outside,
it did as its people chose with governors and
edicts, dodged its taxes, harbored fugitives,
and governed its own affairs quite comfort-
ably.

22 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The Lords Proprietors employed John
Locke, the great English philosopher, to draw
up a form of government for their two infant
colonies, and when he did so a more unsuitable
set of constitutional provisions for a thinly
settled state would be hard to find.

This '^Fundamental Constitution" was a
confused and complicated plan full of strange
titles and orders of nobility, with Its ''Land-
graves" and Its "Caciques," a plan which It
would have been hard enough to follow In a
populous society, with no will of Its own; and
which it was quite Impossible to carry out in
a sparsely peopled edge of the wilderness'
where the principal aim in life of the inhabit-
ants was to escape all outside coercion, and to
delight In space and liberty.

The confusion brought about by this fam-
ous Locke Constitution was also a cause of
this glorious opportunity, eagerly grasped by
the colonists, to avoid outside Interference, as
well as dispense with all the Inconveniences
of home rule and superfluous government.

Still another cause of freedom was the rapid
succession of governors sent by the Lords
Proprietors, some grossly incompetent, some

INTRODUCTORY 23

most tyrannical, and all objectionable to the
temper of the colony even when of average
diligence, or because of that diligence.

The later Royal governors were on the
whole better men, but the custom had gone
on too long for them to subdue those who had
defied so long and so successfully any other
government save their own.

Again, the liberty of North Carolina was
favored simply by the shape of the coast as
mentioned above, indented as it is by sounds
and wide tide-water rivers, intersected by
great swamps, and the whole shut in from the
highway of nations by shallows and sand-bars.
Even neighborhoods were secluded from each
other by sounds and estuaries, while the whole
was protected from outside interference. The
individual planter scarcely saw a dozen folk
outside of his own family in a year.

This freedom of the free in North Carolina
was well known, and many came to her bor-
ders to enjoy it.

The adventurous, then as now, longed for
a wilderness in which to wander; the hunter
wanted game, and found abundance there.

24 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Religious sects, persecuted elsewhere, were
unmolested in North Carolina; dissenters and
Quakers could settle in peace. Indeed the
colonists, like Sir John Falstaff, had almost
forgotten what ''the inside of a church was
like." Those also who wanted to rub out
their reckoning and begin life over again, could
do so unquestioned, and those who simply
wanted to make a living, could make it al-
most too easily for their own welfare, by half
cultivating the rich bottom-lands.

At no time were there any more really crim-
inal persons in North Carolina, in proportion to
the population than there were in Virginia, al-
though there may well have been more fugi-
tives from the law in the strip of no-man's-
land that intervened between North Carolina
and Virginia before the dividing line was run
and agreed upon.

One may read and smile at the witty libel of
Colonel William Byrd of Westover, and note
how this colony and its liberty roused the ire
of the aristocratic Virginian.

He regards it as a big brother does a very
impertinent smaller one who has run away
and is making faces from over the fence. His

INTRODUCTORY 25

chuckles are a bit spiteful as he describes the
inferiority, compared with Virginia, of the
^^Rogues Harbor," this ^'Redemptioners Ref-
uge." He waxes sarcastic over their over-
primitive homes, and habits of living, choosing
extreme examples; he refers to their lack of
piety and churches, adverts to their love of
liquor and laziness, their lack of baptism for
their children and of the sanction of church
ceremony for the union of the parents, and
then, having had his merciless fling at them, he
unwillingly acknowledges that the dividing
line will have to be run fifteen miles or so north
of the line that Virginia has always been claim-
ing.

He is also forced to record that all the set-
tlers on this strip of territory were glad to hear
that they had been set ofl^ into North Carolina
forever, but seems also to regret that by this
means these undesirables and border ruffians
were deprived of chance for future amend-
ment.

Colonel Byrd coveted the pleasure of seeing
them put to rights, although the including of
them in Virginia would have seemed to spoil
the high moral average of that colony accord-
ing to his telling.

26 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The fundamental nature of our population
was sound and wholesome, incentive to crime
was lacking; there was plenty of a rude sort,
no crowding for any, and the excess of liberty
was better endured there than in the west of
of the eighteen-fifties, where there was gold,
and the lust of it, to excite men's ambition.

Colonists were coming in great numbers by
the middle of the eighteenth century. Great
Indian wars were fought to a conclusion, and
the west was opened up more and more, as
people pushed up the great rivers. By 1765,
Mecklenburg and Rowan had filled up, faster
perhaps than the intervening lands. The soil
grew more fertile farther west. Scotch-Irish,
Moravian and Pennsylvania "Dutch", second
generation pioneers, came down the Piedmont
and settled the pleasant valleys.

A few years later, Salisbury and Charlotte
were thriving little frontier towns and Hills-
borough was almost as large as it is today.

For many years after Col. William Byrd and
Edward Mosely had surveyed the dividing line,
Wake County was but an undistinguished part
of the middle western woods, with here and
there a settler; but by 1765 it had become ad-

INTRODUCTORY 27

joining parts of the counties of Johnston and
Orange.

It was in this same year that William Tryon
came to be the new Royal Governor of North
Carolina, and the colony became daily more
prosperous, the west having filled up as stated,
while the eastern precincts grew rich and be-
came refined in their ideas of comfort and even
luxury. Those eastern folk enjoyed agricul-
tural abundance from the fertile soil, they
plied a coastwise trade, and owned large ships
trading to Bermuda and even to English sea-
ports. Their sons were sent to be educated
in England or in the northern colleges, and the
leading men showed "a prevalence of excel-
lent education" although there were no col-
leges and few schools worth the name in all
Carolina.

The different levels of rank were as well
marked in the east as in Virginia at that time,
but in the west, in Carolina, as in western
Virginia, the settlers were mostly Presbyter-
ians and other dissenters, were small farmers,
and did not own slaves, which were always the
rule for working the broad plantations in the
tide-water country.

28 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

These western folk were often pious, but If
by chance some one was careless in religion
he was all the more eager for liberty. Pio-
neers, and the sons of pioneers, some settled
and some pressed on, piercing the wooded
passes of the mountains and faring over into
Kentucky and Tennessee. They were the
second generation in the colony, Americans
born, who cared nothing for the King and the
''Old Home," but rejoiced to find the whole
boundless continent before them. Woods-
men and explorers these, like Daniel Boone,
who once settled for a little time in western
North Carolina, but felt himself crowded
when he could see smoke from a neighbor's
fire closer than twelve miles of wilderness
away.

This was the Old North State when Tryon
came from England to his difficult task, that
of bending the pride of the east, and subdu-
ing the independence of the west, and thus
governing the heterogeneous mixture.

Tryon had many good qualifications. It is
certain by evidence that he must have been
a fine figure of a man; he had been a soldier;
his ability was far above average; he was the

INTRODUCTORY 29

possessor of fine tact, reinforced by an Iron
will, and a determination to govern at all
costs. His first problem was the trouble
about the stamp tax and he handled the news
of its repeal In a masterly manner, gaining
from it the full advantage in behalf of the
Royal Government. Also he cunningly util-
ized the joy and good humor over this repeal
as an opportunity for asking money to build a
governor's mansion In New Berne, then the
seat of government.

When we think of the dislike of all America
for the word "taxes" at that date, and when
we remember how unwilling our fathers then
were, and their descendants still are, to spend
money for governmental show and glory,
Tryon is in this matter shown to be a com-
manding and astute manager of men. His
ascendancy over the lower house of deputies,
and his gaining so much of his desires from
them seem little short of marvelous.

He received fifteen thousand pounds in all
for building his ''palace" as it began to be call-
ed, and when this was finished it was the finest
building of the kind in all America. Tryon
reconstructed there, as best he could, the

30 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

English ideal of polite society, and held social
festivities with all dignity and due decorum;
but the accomplishment of his heart's desire
brought him a thriving crop of jealous com-
ment from the wealthy planters who did not
relish his sitting to receive them in his
*'elbow chair," nor his haughty airs in his fine
house.

As to the western farmers in their log-cabins^
although they were a thousand times better
off than their brethren of the English country-
side, and though they did not call themselves
either poor or miserable, they lived hardily
and had little respect for luxury, and no pa-
tience at all with what seemed to them sinful
extravagance. Moreover they had a set of
excellent grievances. They justly complained
of the large fees for the grants and deeds to
their land, extorted by the sheriffs and county
clerks. The amounts of these fees are not set
down as so enormous, but the King's officers
were constantly accused of over-charging, and
of charging twice and pocketing the difference.
Also these dues must be paid in real money,
of which there was very little in circulation in
the Colony and which then had a much greater
purchasing power than now.

INTRODUCTORY 31

Thus the men of the back country were fer-
menting with a spirit of obstinate opposition
to constituted authority, while taxes were
some years in arrears. That there was op-
pression and abuse seems quite certain, and
also that this oppression was caused by the
arbitrary and offensive behavior of the men
in charge of the tax collecting.

Mingled with the ever-growing dislike of
their tyranny was indignation over the ex-
pense of building that great fine palace, and
added to that, an ill-defined irritation against
what we might call pernicious high-brow-ism
in some of the more prominent officials, es-
pecially Edmund Fanning and John Frohock.

Fanning was called Tryon's son-in-law, but
authority for that is wanting. He was a
graduate of Harvard College and a man tact-
less and arrogant, who felt and showed con-
tempt for these frontier folk. The hatred that
centered upon him cannot be accounted for in
any other way. Not one voice has been raised
in vindication of his doings until more than
a hundred years had passed since he left
North Carolina. The sting of disdain out-
lasts blows and injuries In the memory, and

32 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Fanning and Frohock were so hated that they
became the subjects of the first popular bal-
lads native to North Carolina, mere prose not
expressing the strong feelings of the people
against them, and an ante-Revolutionary
"Hymn of Hate" being necessary.

The Governor went to the western part of
the State In 1770 to compose the trouble that
was brewing there, which was the beginning
of what Is called the Regulators War, but
he does not seem to have gone to the root of the
matter. He simply told the people to be
good, and while he had Fanning tried, allowed
him to be white-washed and fined only a
penny for each of the extortions as proven.
Tryon could not read the signs of the times
and left discontent behind him.

The Regulators were full of bitterness. It
was a feeling rather than a reasoned opinion.
The War of the Regulation, as It seems to our
partial Information, was the rising of a ground-
swell of Democracy.

It bore some analogy to the spirit of oppo-
sition which has sometimes possessed the
mountain folk of our own and adjoining states
when they thought of revenue collectors and
United States revenue officers.

INTRODUCTORY 33

Mr. Frank Nash has called this ''political
near-sightedness" In one of his historical
papers, and that expresses the condition better
than any other phrase.

The backwoodsman who had traveled far
and subdued a bit of the wilderness for his
own, wished to be let alone in possession of
what he had so hardly won. He had fought and
fended for himself against crude nature and
savage foes, had made his clearing and built
his cabin with unaided arm. He could scarce-
ly acknowledge the right of any one to dictate
to him. Like the Irishman who said he owed
nothing to posterity by reason that posterity
had never been of any benefit to him, the
frontiersman considered talk of this govern-
ment, and of taxes owing to it, quite imperti-
nent, while the British throne and the king
over the water had no sentimental appeal to
him.

His case was parallel to that of the moun-
taineer who finds a far-away government lay-
ing hands upon his home-made whiskey. He
has made it out of his own corn, which he has
often cultivated by hand on a hillside too
steep to plough, and he knows that this indul-

The old sassafras tree ox the Capitol Square still

ALIVE IN 1922. From this famous "deer stand" forty

head of deer were shot by one hunter, within the

memory of those alive in 1800.

INTRODUCTORY 35

gence Is denied him by an outside Influence
and not of his own consent.

No brief Is held for the moonshiner, but
who can not understand the point of view of
the Ignorant mountaineer? Our frontiersman
reasoned much In the same way, and his fees
and taxes seemed enormous to him, and In-
deed were so, measured by his ability to pay
in real money.

It was In 1771 when Tryon returned west
with the eastern militia to quell this distur-
bance In Orange and Rowan, which grew
daily more severe, and it was in that very
year that Wake County came Into existence.
The Regulators were most active in Orange
and Rowan, and the best opportunity for
getting together and talking politics was then
even more than It Is now, court week, for
that was the only time when the whole settle-
ment turned out in a general manner.

Tryon thought It would be a good thing to
divide the counties, and, so doing, divide the
courts and prevent so general a free discus-
sion. He therefore influenced his council to
set off four new counties, Guilford, Chatham,
Surry, and Wake, as a measure for dividing

36 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Up the Regulators and silencing their general
discussions. The reason given in the enact-
ment, however, is one of distance and greater
convenience in attending court. This meas-
ure was signed by Tryon in the spring of 1771.

In the record of the expedition of that same
spring against the Regulators, we find Tryon
camped at Hunter's Lodge, the home of
Theophllus Hunter in Wake County, and said
to have been about four miles from the present
southern boundary of the City of Raleigh.

It is also of record that the (Ramsgate)
Rhamkatt Road was laid off through the
woods towards Hillsborough so as to avoid the
rough hills of the Granville Tobacco Path, in
hastening Tryon's military wagons.

We also note that the sign and countersign
of one of those days of delay in camp at Hunt-
er's Lodge, as they waited for recruits, were
the words "Wake" and ^'Margaret," which
suggests strongly the origin of the name of the
new county. The maiden name of the Gov-
ernor's lady was Margaret Wake, and the
new county might well have been named for
her, especially as the parish was named St.
Margaret's, after her baptismal name. Es-

INTRODUCTORY 37

ther Wake, that lovely vision whose tradition
Is so persistent, cannot be absolutely proved
to be more than an Imagination of the gallant
Shocco Jones. She probably existed, but we
cannot be certain of It now, and the name
Wake Is easily accounted for without her aid.
It has very recently been noted that in
January, 1771, "the Honorable Miss Wake"
gave two pounds sterling for the founding of a
minister and teacher for the German settle-
ment. This shows Esther a very kindly,
lovely girl.

Wake County was carved out of Orange for
the most part, and included also a bit of John-
ston and a little of Cumberland. In making
of new counties around It later, it lost part of
its first extent; but it was then, as now, the
midmost county between the low country
and the mountains, and Is approximately
central between the Virginia line and the
boundary of South Carolina. It is the level
where the long-leaved pines of the lower
lands yield to forests of hardwood trees, and the
sandy soils pass definitely Into red clay. Its
wonderful diversity of products is directly re-
ferable to this variety of soil, and the two

INTRODUCTORY 39

edges of the county, eastern and western, are
as distinct as though a hundred miles separat-
ed their boundaries.

The first ridges of any regularity of extent
which cross the State from north to south, the
first ripples of those folds which rise into the
great Blue Ridge, cross Wake County. Al-
most all varieties of soil not strictly alluvial
are found in some part or another of Wake,
and indeed there is often the greatest differ-
ence in the constitution of the soil of different
sides of the same field. The climate also is
about the medium between the damp of the
east and the keen light air of the mountain
section. Neuse River and Its tributary creeks
drain and water it well. Raleigh, the Capital
of the State for more than a hundred years,
occupies almost a central point In the County,
and has been until now the only large town
of the County.

CHAPTER II
The First Twenty-five Years

ROM Theophilus Hunter's in
Wake County, Tryon marched
direct to the Battle of Alamance,
where the Regulators were beat-
en, their army dispersed, and six
of their ringleaders quickly hung for treason.
So thorough were his methods that all ac-
tive hostility was then over. But although
their armed resistance was quelled, the ''em-
battled farmers" of North Carolina went to
their homes with that bewildered feeling of
frustration and utter disaster that left them
neither self-confidence for future attempt, nor
expectation of any redress for their crying
grievances. The public debt which Tryon
incurred in this expedition, added to the ar-
rears bequeathed to him by his predecessors,
was never paid; nor would it have been easy
to collect from a people more and more indig-
nant, more and more weaned from its alleg-
iance to Great Britain.

The New England Colonies treading the
self-same path, sent emissaries to North Car-

[40]

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 41

ollna to test the temper of Its people, and
never did sentiments of liberty meet greater
sympathy, or aspirations for Independent ex-
istence more favor. The people of North
Carolina were ripe for revolution. Wrote
Thomas JeflFerson at this time, "There Is no
doubtfulness In North Carolina, no state Is
more fixed or forward."

In this year of transition and bitter brood-
ing was held the first court In the new County
of Wake, and w^e know who located the coun-
ty seat at Wake Cross Roads, and named It
Bloomsbury, which name had never appeared
before in this place. This was also done by
the Tryons, and the name of Bloomsbury
must be referred to them, as being the name
of a new suburb of London, just then being
"developed" as we say of real estate ventures.

Russell, Earl of Bedford, was building this
part of London on a portion of his ancestral
acres, and he Is said also to have been re-
sponsible In some way for Tryon's appoint-
ment as Colonial Governor. Russell Square,
which Is so often mentioned In Thackeray's
novel. Vanity Fair, as the home of the heroine,
was In Bloomsbury, and Is the actual name of

42 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

a street there. This name must have meant
something of home and London to the Try-
ons, as is shown by their giving it to this cor-
ner of the wilderness. Here is a likely con-
nection.

On the contrary, we cannot see any reason
why Joel Lane, born on this side of the ocean,
and busy, enterprising wild-westerner as one
might call him, should fancy and insist upon
the name of Bloomsbury more than any other
English name. He probably was glad to
adopt a name which the Governor suggested
for his tavern. This western Bloomsbury was
a mere stopping place beside the Hillsborough
Road, and the first court was held in the resi-
dence or tavern of this Joel Lane, already one
of Wake County's most prominent citizens.
There was a jail of logs, and our first sherifi"
was named Michael Rogers. Theophilus
Hunter was a justice, and so were Joel Lane and
several other of the men whose names occur
first on the records. The old court corres-
ponded to the English Quarter Sessions and
has been long superseded by the later con-
stitutional arrangements of North Carolina.

There still stands, in the western part of
Raleigh, a rather small house with a very

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 43

Steep gambrel roof, In the style of architec-
ture common at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century and before, called the Dutch
Colonial. This house used to face Boylan
Avenue, standing a little back from the street,
but was moved a few years ago, and now faces
the south side of Hargett Street near the State
Prison.

The exact year of its erection is not known,
but its architecture is of the same order as
that of the house at Yorktown, Virginia,
where Cornwallis surrendered to General
Washington.

It also resembles in angle of roof the little
"Andrew Johnson Birthplace" which stands
restored in Pullen Park, and another historic
house at Edenton, where was held the Eden-
ton Tea Party. The peculiar, quite steep
slant of the roof over the second story has
been disused in more modern houses, and
serves as a means of dating the erection.

This house on Hargett Street was once
known as the "First Capitol," and was built
by and belonged to Joel Lane. It may well
have been new at the time we are describing
It was considered a very fine house in its day,
and is called the "best house within a hundred
miles."

44 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Probably those same old walls that we all
have seen were those that sheltered the first
county court, and there Tryon certainly
stopped on his return from the military ex-
pedition against the Regulators. It could
scarcely have been built during the troubled
times of the Revolution, and could well have
been in existence in the year 1772, as it is of
record that it was in 1781.

On the street corner near to its first situa-
tion a boulder has been placed, and a bronze
tablet let into its side bears the following in-
scription, placed there by the Daughters of
the Revolution, Bloomsbury Chapter, in the
year 1911.

ON AND AROUND THIS SPOT STOOD THE OLD TOWN OF
BLOOMSBURY OR WAKE COUNTY COURT HOUSE

Which was erected and made the County Seat
WHEN Wake County was established
IN 1771. This place was the ren-
dezvous OF A PART OF TyROn's

Army when he marched
against the Regu-
lators in I 77 I

Here met the Revolutionary Assembly in 1781,

AND to this vicinity WAS REMOVED THE

State seat of Government
WHEN the Capital City
OF Raleigh was
incorporated
in 1782.

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 45

Tryon and his lady left North Carolina in
1771 for New York State, he to become Gov-
ernor there, and North Carolina never saw-
either of them again. It Is said that they
were glad to go In spite of having to leave the
fine house they had built In New Berne, be-
cause the climate had not suited their health
nor the spirit of the colony their minds.
When the Revolution came on, Tryon County
in the west was promptly divided Into Lin-
coln and Rutherford and the Governor's
name thus expunged from our County roll;
but the name of Wake spoke neither of de-
feat nor oppression.

Gallant North Carolina would not flout the
Governor's lady, and Wake remained the
name of a county, and shall ever remain so
called, whether named originally for that
lovely shadow, Esther Wake, or for her fair
sister, Lady Tryon.

The Revolution called on every man to rally
to his colors. Tories were plentiful and active
in North Carolina. The former Regulators
strangely did not come to the help of the Con-
gress very freely, but seem to have been cowed
or disgusted with fighting, and stood aloof,

46 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

not enlisting on either side. The Wake
County mihtia volunteered, and from the
sparse population many men went to war.
We will not follow these, but, remaining at
home, will mention a few points of distinctly
Wake County history.

We have already described Joel Lane's
home, called the 'Tirst Capitol," and it was
there that the General Assembly of North
Carolina met in the month of June, 1781.
The Capital of the State had been a movable
institution for some time previous, being ap-
pointed to meet at first one town and then
another, according to the necessities of a
country at war. Records were thus many a
time lost, and it is wonderful that we possess
intact as many as we do, considering the dif-
ficulty of keeping up with such a shifting
capital. As a measure of safety perhaps,
Wake County was made the choice of this
troubled year, almost the lowest ebb of the
American cause. At this meeting Joel Lane
was voted the sum of fifteen thousand pounds
for the lodging and food of the General As-
sembly and the pasturage for their horses.
His guests must have been as addicted to

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 47

fried chicken as the preachers are accused of
being, for the next item of allowance is one to
Vincent Vass, *'for candles and fowls" eigh-
teen hundred pounds.

These are not such great sums as they
sound, for the colonial currency of paper
money became extremely depreciated as the
Revolution went on, just as the Confederate
paper money did years afterward in the war
between the States; and by this time it was
worth no more of its face value than is in-
dicated in the saying, "not worth a Continen-
tal."

A good horse would bring twelve hundred
pounds in the money of that year, and we may
estimate by this that the members of Assem-
bly probably had no more chicken than they
needed.

Another event of this Wake County session
of the Assembly, much more noteworthy, was
the inauguration of a Governor of North Caro-
lina, which was, prophetically, held for the first
time in Wake County inside the area of the
future capital of the State, while as yet it was
not. The war-time Governor was Thomas
Burke of Orange County, and the announce-

48 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ment of his election to the Governor's office
was formally conveyed to him at the tavern
at Wake Court House, at the beginning of
this first Assembly there convened.

His speech of acceptance, his inaugural, on
that occasion, refers to the difficulty of his
task, and especially mentions the activities
of the Tories, the condition of the colony al-
most verging on civil war, and the lack of
proper support from the people to the State
Government.

Burke was a well educated man, and had
assisted in drafting the State Constitution
adopted for North Carolina at the time of
the Declaration of Independence at Philadel-
phia. He was an Irishman from Galway and
a Catholic, but although he lived in a far more
intolerant age than ours, the fact of his relig-
ious belief was never mentioned against him.
According to English law, which was the
foundation of the law of the colonies, none
but Protestants could hold office, and of Pro-
testants only Church of England men. In the
colonies, however, this rule had already been
ignored before the Revolution, and dissenters
had become governors of North Carolina

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 49

under the old government. No one now asked
anything of Governor Burke save as to his
patriotism.

Burke lived near Hillsborough, and was
further distinguished as being the very first
of the poets In this State, except only those
nameless ballad-makers among the Regulators.
His further adventures are of Interest.

In September of that same year, 1781, the
Tories under David Fanning (a name of bad
odor, but no relation that we know to that
Edmund first mentioned) came up In force
from the southern counties, with the publicly
avowed aim of capturing the Governor of
North Carolina.

They raided Hillsborough, then called the
capital. David Fanning was a native of Wake
County, and a Tory bushwhacker; he knew
the lay of the land. His band surprised the
defenceless village of Hillsborough one night,
and while Burke and his friends seem to have
been expecting them, and to have resisted with
spirit, the Tories were too many for them, and
Burke was captured and carried to Wilming-
ton, then in British possession. Thence he
was taken to Sullivans, and later to James

50 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Island off the coast of South Carolina. Being
held imprisoned by the expanse of ocean about
this island, he was set free on parole there.
He felt most unsafe, his life being threatened
by a lawless band of Tories living on the is-
land, and was forced to hide from place to
place.

Being, as he said, in such danger of his life,
he broke his parole and escaped, returning to
North Carolina. Arrived there he immedi-
ately resumed his office as Governor. The
leaders of the army and of civil affairs do not
seem to have known quite what to do about
his actions. A man at liberty on parole, even
though supposedly confined by the limits of
an island and who had broken that parole to
escape, appeared to them not quite an hon-
orable man, much less a hero, and as such,
unworthy to hold the office highest in the
state. Burke, however, felt himself justified,
and showed no scruples on the subject.

On April the twenty-second, 1782, Burke
having at last found that the sentiment of
the people and the Assembly was against
him, asked of his own accord to resign, and
the Assembly consented with great alacrity.

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 51

The name of Alexander Martin was pro-
posed to supersede Burke, while a vote of
thanks and recognition of his service was pass-
ed to permit his retiring with full dignity.

Burke died during the next year at
Hillsborough, his home. Burke County, North
Carolina, was named for him, not for the other
greater Irishman, Edmund Burke, who gave
expression in England to the creed of American
freedom. Burke Square, where our Gover-
nor's mansion stands today, was also named
for him and no other, and had he not fallen
upon such trying times and puzzling cir-
cumstances, his name might shine undimmed
by even a bit of poor judgment.

It has always appeared to the careless
reader of history that the interval between
the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown and
the association of this state with the rest of
the Union was an eneventful and negligible
time, because it was not signalized by drama-
tic events, as was the period of Revolutionary
struggle just past.

We are required to count those seven or
eight years long years, and to conceive the
various perplexities they brought, in order to

52 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

see what a risk and what an experiment this
government of ours was considered at first,
and how many new questions pressed for so-
lution upon the leaders everywhere, especially
upon the members of the Constitutional Con-
vention of Philadelphia.

It was clear enough that the Articles of
Confederation which had been strong enough
to unite the colonies against a common foe
during the Revolution, could not sufficiently
hold together the differing interests of the
different states, during their period of recov-
ery from the damage of the war. It was to
meet those new internal dangers that the Con-
stitution of the United States was framed.

Our fathers builded better than they knew.
When drawn up, the Constitution was sub-
mitted to each of the states for its approval
by vote of its representatives. Nine states,
by approving the articles, would make the
Constitution valid for all. North Carolina
summoned her Constitutional Convention to
consider the new Constitution and recommend
any amendments considered necessary to its
adoption by herself.

This was done, and those amendments
which were recommended stand mostly em-

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 53

bodied in the United States Constitution
today, all four being concerned with personal
and states rights, which were not considered
sufficiently guarded in the first draft, to satisfy
our individualistic ideas in old North Carolina.

At the second Constitutional Convention in
Fayetteville, amendments had been adopted
by the Philadelphia convention, many states
had already ratified, and North Carolina was
content to fall into the procession. This
assembly voted to ratify the Constitution at
once, this being in November, 1789, and
North Carolina being next to the last state to
enter the Union. This is all general history,
but what makes it necessary to review it here
is the fact that the location of the City of
Raleigh, and its choice as our permanent capi-
tal, was mixed and sandwiched in with the
grave and searching consideration of the
Articles of Constitution. This was because
the task was set for this first convention, not
only of criticising and later ratifying the Con-
stitution of the United States, but also of
choosing a proper seat of government or
state capital for North Carolina.

*'The first Constitutional Convention of
North Carolina was held at Hillsborough on

54 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the twenty-fifth of July, in the year of our
Lord 1788, in the thirteenth year of the in-
dependence of the United Colonies of America,
in pursuance of the resolution of the last
General Assembly, for the purposes of deliber-
ating and determining on a proper form of
Federal Government; and for fixing the unal-
terable seat of government for this State."

Thus runs the opening phrase of the report
of this convention. A full delegation was
present, five from each county represented
the best minds and most patriotic hearts of
the land. The delegation from Wake con-
sisted of Joel Lane, Thomas Hines, Brittain
Saunders, James Hinton and Nathaniel Jones.
Governor Samuel Johnson presided as Gov-
ernor of the Colony. The debate of the de-
legates shows a good deal of opposition to
ratification on the part of the extreme Jef-
fersonians, led by Willie Jones of Halifax.
The second part of their task, that of fixing
an "unalterable seat of government" was at-
tended with many jealousies and bickerings.
This is a matter of tradition as well as of re-
cord, and even mixed into the conventional
phrases we may today trace bitter rivalry be-

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 55

tween the west and the east, between one town
and the other. Tradition has it that Wilhe
Jones was a master at log-rolling and took a
hand for his friends in this free-for-all contest.
The first motion making this business the
order of the day was made by Mr. Rutherford
of Rowan, seconded by Mr. Steele, his col-
league, also of Rowan. "Resolved, that this
Convention tomorrow at four o'clock in the
afternoon fix on a proper place for the seat of
government."

This resolution was passed but protested
against by Mr. Blount of Beaufort County.
Next day, accordingly, a committee was se-
lected to choose places for the Convention to
vote upon in turn "Exact spot not to be fixed,
but that it be left to the discretion of the
Assembly to ascertain the exact spot; provided
it be within ten miles of the point or place de-
termined by this Convention."

This defined indefiniteness is accounted for
by considering that the provision was made in
order to prevent the speculation in land that
could suddenly be brought to pass if the spot
should be more definitely located. Besides,
we may consider that conditions as to water

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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 57

and water courses, and levels and slopes
were not entirely known, and room for ad-
justment would be afforded in a twenty-mile
diameter.

The following places were voted on by the
Convention. Smithfield, Tarborough, Fay-
etteville. The Fork of Haw and Deep Rivers,
Mr. Isaac Hunter's Plantation in Wake
County (placed in nomination by Air. Ire-
dell of Chowan), New Berne, Hillsborough.

On ballot Mr. Isaac Hunter's plantation
in Wake County was fixed on for the future
location of the Capital in its immediate
neighborhood. This vote was taken on Au-
gust second, 1788.

Willie Jones of Halifax (being, as a living
man an astute politician, and none the less
still to be reverenced as one of our constructive
statesmen so long after his death), seems to
have moved on the stormy waters at this junc-
ture, and to have shaped things to his mind.

Just why he wished to locate the Capital
in Wake, and why he moved in such myster-
ious ways to that end, the terse record does
not show; but tradition insists that he did a
good deal of the dealing, and as we are too far

./

58 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

down the river of time to review his conclus-
ions, we will just be satisfied with the result,
and be glad he made so good a selection, using
his so great Influence to bring it about. From
out the past comes a whisper about the recipe
which he used for apple toddy, and about
supper at Joel Lane's tavern. Surely they
slander the city's founders who repeat this
old story! Scarcely was the vote counted
when Mr. Barry Grove of Fayetteville entered
a protest on the following grounds : "First,
because the situation chosen Is unconnected
with commerce and can never rise above the
degree of a village. The same mistake has
been made in the selection of Wllllamsburgh
and of Annapolis, and the result is seen there.
Secondly, because Fayetteville would have a
great effect upon commerce, being a thriving
town at the head of navigation."

This protest was signed with one hundred
nineteen names, and would indicate that the
opposing factions, though strong, did not get
together quite early enough to thwart Mr.
Jones or accomplish their own wish.

The west wanted Fayetteville or Hills-
borough; the eastern section was divided, each

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 59

delegate wanting the chief town of most con-
venient location in his own immediate neigh-
borhood ; and rather than vote for a rival town
would vote for a western place, by this means
restraining the rival from profiting.

Thus the vote being so close and so doubt-
ful, a committee was appointed to report later
upon this matter, when the constitutional
convention should meet at Fayetteville the
next year.

Accordingly, in the autumn of 1789, the
Convention ratified the United States Con-
stitution with far less wordy war than they
had expended upon the question of a site
for the capital the year before. The com-
mittee which was to report upon the matter
of the seat of government was not ready at that
time and made its recommendations two years
later, by which time all the tumult and shouting
had finally died, and the matter was settled
once for all in favor of the Wake County site.

Fayetteville still felt aggrieved and said so,
and her indignation was reasonable enough,
but such compromises are very often made.

Perhaps we should be justified in raising a
statue to the memory of that great Jefi^er-

|»^Ci^fe.

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 61

sonian, Willie Jones, as the real founder of
Raleigh, for to his interest the actual parcel-
ing out seems due. Nine commissioners were
given the task of laying off ground for the
new city, and selecting for that purpose among
the various tracts offered.

The names of the commissioners were
James Martin, Hargett, Dawson, McDowell,
Blount, Harrington, Bloodworth, Person, and
Willie Jones, and while all did not actually
ride over the various lands, all have their
names perpetuated in the names of streets of
Raleigh.

Joel Lane's tract was chosen, and a thous-
and acres of land bought from him. Part of
this land was originally Mr. Lane's, but part
belonged to Theophilus Hunter of Hunter's
Lodge, was sold by him to Mr. Lane a short
time before, and was bargained for by the
commissioners as part of the Lane tract. The
original Lane land ended at Morgan Street
and all south of that line was Mr. Hunter's.
This purchase is the greater part of the land
where the city of Raleigh now stands. At
that time it was covered with primeval forest,
and some old oaks are still standing which

62 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

must have shaded the surveyors who run off
the streets and carved our city squares out of
the virgin wilderness.

On Friday March thirtieth, 1792, the
final decision was made, and boundaries locat-
ed. The price paid to Lane for the whole
tract of land was two thousand seven hundred
fifty dollars, which does not sound like a fancy
price for a selected square mile of land.

William Christmas was the surveyor, and
was paid one hundred ten dollars for his work
after he had finished laying out substantially
the same streets and squares that we tread
in our daily walk at this date.

The Capitol Square is the largest, in the
center of the city. Four other squares were
left open to form parks, and named Caswell,
Nash, Burke, after the three Governors of
those names, while the fourth was called
Moore, after the first Attorney General, who
afterwards became Associate Justice of the
United States Supreme Court. Streets were
named after Stephen Cabarrus, William Le-
noir, William R. Davie, and Joel Lane, be-
sides the commissioners as named above.
The streets which ended at Capitol Square,

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 63

and those bounding It were named after the
leading towns of the state at that time—
Hillsborough, Fayettevllle, Halifax, New
Berne, Salisbury, Edenton, Wilmington, ex-
cept Morgan, which is named for what was
then a judicial district.

One wonders why there was not a Charlotte
Street, according to the plan. Fayettevllle
Street was at one time afterwards known as
LaFayette Street, but the change has not per-
sisted.

Raleigh was born a city. No wandering
pre-hlstoric cows laid out her streets and
marked her thoroughfares, as was the case
with older settlements. Her name was ready
for her two hundred years before, and was be-
stowed at the suggestion of Governor Alex-
ander xMartin, and her charter had been grant-
ed in 1587 when Sir Walter Raleigh attempted
a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island.
This historic name was inevitably hers. It
was the only name that could have been given
with propriety to a capital of North Carolina.
The Infant city stood clothed in forest, with
streets blazed among the trees. The four
avenues which ended at the Capitol Square,

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then named Union Square, were much broader
than the rest, and the only criticism we can
offer to the worthy committee who laid out
our town is that they might have made all
the streets as wide, seeing that land was
cheap and paving unknown. It is not wonder-
ful that no vision of automobile traffic and
street railway system visited their minds, but
they did show a great foresight in giving us a
park system, foresight which their descend-
ants have done their best to nullify, for in our
great economy we have built up two of these
four squares which were left open for us and
for our children, and we shall always have
to keep repenting our short-sightedness.

After the City of Raleigh was thus laid out
and named, lots were sold to pay for the
building of a State House. The commission
who attended to this were R. Bennehan,
John Macon (brother of Nathaniel Macon),
Robert Goodloe, Nathaniel Bryan, and Theo-
philus of Hunter's Lodge.

The architect of the first Capitol was Rhody
Atkins, whose name was not again mentioned.
The floor plan was quite similar in form to the
present building, but much smaller, plainer,

66 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

and built of rough brick. The brick was
burned for the building on lots 138 and 154 of
the original survey.

The old Capitol turned its back on Hills-
borough street. It faced the east according to
the custom of many another public building
erected at that epoch. It cost the State of
North Carolina twenty thousand dollars when
complete, and was enough enclosed in 1794
so that the Legislature met that year for the
first time in the "New State House" in the
City of Raleigh.

The members of assembly boarded in the

neighboring farm houses and at Joel Lane's

tavern, and rode in to their work each day on

horse-back. Scarcely anyone lived as yet

in the limit of the city proper. The State

House stood in solitude, surrounded by its

mighty oaks for the most part of the first de-

I cade. Raleigh was like any other town

I created by legislative act, crude and strug-

[gling at first.

Washington was the same kind of capital
on a far larger scale; but both have long out-
grown their awkward age.

CHAPTER III
Early ff^orthies

IFE just after the Revolution was
a much simpler manner of exist-
ence than it is now, especially as
regards worldly possessions. In
1800, there were but ten thous-
and people in all Wake County, and many of
these were negro slaves, although not so many
servants were thought necessary in proportion
to the white folk as it was customary to hold
in the eastern counties where the lowland
climate made agricultural labor difficult for
Caucasians.

The names of the most prominent citizens
of Wake County in the last days of the eigh-
teenth century and the beginning of the nine-
teenth were the same surnames which usually
occur in the meager records of assemblies and
conventions of the early pre-revolutionary
time. These fathers as members and as del-
egates showed much practical sense and won-
derful comprehension of public questions;
they were also possessors of many a fertile acre
of uncleared forest; their spirit was that of the

68 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

eager pioneer whose prospects were fair before
him, but whose present possessions did not
hamper him enough to become a daily care.

The Importance of the cotton crop was not
yet apparent. Whitney's cotton gin was not
yet Invented, and the four or five pounds of
cotton which one person could laboriously seed
In a day, would not afford so much lint as was
needed for home consumption. Those were
the days of the small cotton patch planted to
supply the spinning wheel and loom, and each
child and every servant of the home must
seed his shoe full of cotton, each winter even-
ing before going to bed, as his regular task.

Tobacco was the crop which brought In
money or exchange. It exhausted the new
land very quickly, and was hard to transport
over the rough roads of the settlements, but
it was nevertheless an all-Important means of
paying for any Imported goods, and a regular
medium of exchange In North Carolina as for-
merly also in Virginia. Much of what we
read in that time before railroads, about the
prime Importance of locating the towns upon
rivers, was considered true, because it was an
easy means of readily transporting tobacco to
a good market.

EARLY WORTHIES 69

Wheat was raised in sufficiency and corn
in great abundance. The response of the
virgin soil was wonderful and the climate was
as fine then as now. The farmer whose family-
did not live in plenty was a man who would
not take the trouble to raise the food he could
easily cultivate. Great herds of pigs roamed
the woods and lived on acorns and nuts, half
wild, only coming at intervals to be fed a little
corn when they heard the shrill halloo of the
slave whose duty it was to look after them.
Cattle, too, roamed the woods and were only
a little more tame, coming up to be milked as
they chose.

All the house work halted when the bell-
cow's jangling bell was heard in the clearing,
and the women quickly went to milk the herd,
whatever the hour of day.

Houses were small and simple, log-cabins
well or ill-built, single or double, and all chairs
and small furnishings were home-made. Only
now and then was there some prized chest or
high-boy which had been brought from the
last station of the pioneer family, or even
from old England direct.

Vehicles were confined to wagons and gigs,
and a family carriage was as much of a rarity

70 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

in the early years of the nineteenth century as
an automobile was in the latest ones. Ladies
rode pillion, behind their men or their servants,
or singly if attended. Everyone expected to
ride horseback as well for a long journey as
for a short one.

Hunting and fishing were the chief sports,
but racing was universal in a country so de-
pendent as this upon good and spirited horses;
but there seems to have been no regular race-
track in Wake County at this early date.
Shooting matches for beef were held and con-
ducted much like the famous match described
in "Georgia Scenes." Cock-fighting was a
common sport, the taste for which came from
England with the Colonists. Wherever a few
people could gather from the thinly settled
neighborhoods, they enjoyed dancing and
fiddling, and such amusements were partici-
pated in by young and old alike.

As to the look of the country, we know that
the forest and the old field bore such a great
proportion to the cultivated cleared land that
farms were far apart. Only here and there
did a home stand out against a wooded slope,
here and there a slim spiral of smoke betray a

EARLY WORTHIES 71

human habitation behind the trees, or a clear-
ed field show the work of the settler. Roads
wound for miles through unbroken woodland,
and the cultivated fields seemed but patches.
This life was not a poor one, although it was
extremely simple. It was independent, it was
self-respecting. It was full of rude plenty and
wholesome work, of hope and expectation.
A poor man could make a start and be sure of
getting a living while paying for his land. He
would raise a little stock and a pair of colts.
His log-cabin cost him little beside the time he
took to build it, and he need never go without
his simple food and clothing and his necessities
provided that he was a good shot, and that he
and his wife were industrious. Slavery light-
ened the tasks of those who could get far
enough ahead of the world to afi^ord the pur-
chase of a servant or two. With all its faults
it was a life which had an upward slope to it,
and a hopefulness for the future which kept it
stimulating.

There were practically no schools in Wake
County for the first years of its existence, and
after the Capitol stood lonely on its hill in the
midst of the new City of Raleigh. At various

72 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

cross-roads were taverns where men met.
Court week called them to Raleigh sometimes,
and occasionally a preacher passed through
and services were held; but the children were
mostly left to home instruction and to the
educating influence of practical experience and
the many absorbing interests of their back-
woods homes and their free life in the open.

The leading spirits were not satisfied with
this state of things, however. There were a
few men of education and refinement in Wake
County from the first, and all these were prom-
inent in the State history and politics of their
day.

The first name that appears in the Colonial
Records showing active service and prominence
in the new county of Wake was John Hinton,
who lived on Neuse River near Milburnie.
He owned enormous tracts of land along the
Neuse under grant from Lord Carteret, and
when in course of time Wake County was
divided from Johnston County, his residence
fell within its boundaries. His residence was
called Clay-Hill-on-the-Neuse.

He had moved from Chowan (the part now
Gates County), about the middle of the eigh-

EARLY WORTHIES IZ

teenth century, and his father's name before
him was John Hinton. He married Grizelle
Kimbrough, and had eight or nine children
who reached maturity. John Hinton was
Major in the provincial troops of Johnston
County, and was thus called to aid Governor
Tryon in the expedition against the Regula-
tors. He was made Colonel of the Wake
County troops in 1771, and was In command
of his men at the Battle of Alamance. Gov-
ernor Caswell mentions that he was an eye-
witness of Colonel Hinton's gallant behavior
on this occasion.

Colonel Hinton lived near the home where
his descendants still live. He was a promi-
nent man in the Revolutionary struggle, of-
fering himself at once to the American cause.
He served in the first Provincial Congress at
New Berne, was appointed Colonel of North
Carolina troops, was present at the Battle of
Moore's Creek Bridge, was a member of the
Council of Safety for Wake County, and acted
always the part of the brave patriotic gentle-
man he was.

He died in 1784, leaving several minor
children, and besides his own personal service

74 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

two of his sons were in the Revolutionary
Army. John Hinton the third, his eldest,
was commissioned as Major, and James Hin-
ton was Colonel of a troop of horse.

James Hinton above, married Delilah Hunt-
er, daughter of Theophilus Hunter of Hunter's
Lodge. Two of the daughters of Colonel
Hinton successively became wives of Joel
Lane, one dying quite young. Thus the
Hinton family was connected with those few
other families which seem to have shared with
them the first possession of the broad acres
of pristine Wake County wilderness, and the
moulding of the little community by their
service and examples.

The descendants of these people are here
with us today, and their blood runs in the
veins of many who never have traced out
their pedigree sufficiently to be proud as they
justly may be of their fine old Revolutionary
ancestry.

Hinton James, the first student that regis-
tered at the newly opened University of North
Carolina, and another Hinton who graduated
with him in the first class, were both grand-
sons of Colonel John Hinton of Wake. Judge

EARLY WORTHIES 75

Henry Seawell married a daughter of John
Hinton, son of Colonel John HInton, Second,
the first of the name to settle In Wake.

Theophllus Hunter of Hunter's Lodge ap-
pears first as the host of Governor Tryon, and
his plantation was the headquarters of the
expedition of 1771 during Its halt of several
days In Wake County. It was at his planta-
tion that the recruiting was done for Tyron's
Army, which Is recorded as having been so slow
and so unsatisfactory, the smaller farmers
holding sympathy with the Regulators.

Theophllus Hunter the elder was the pre-
siding justice of the first county court ever
held In Wake County, and when the first court
house was moved from Joel Lane's tavern,
Wake Cross Roads, or Bloomsbury, by which-
ever name one chooses to call the place, to Its
present site on Fayettevllle street, Theophllus
Hunter and James Bloodworth each conveyed
half an acre adjoining to the then justices of
Wake County and their successors In office
forever, for the nominal sum of five shillings;
and upon this piece of ground the new court
house was then built, and successive buildings
have occupied the same lot.

l(y HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

This property has become so extremely val-
uable, that some time since there was an Idea
of Its being sold, and some land purchased
which might not be quite so valuable, although
quite as convenient for the purpose. Upon
looking into the old deeds it was found that
to use this ground for any other purpose be-
side the designated one of locating a court
house upon it, would forfeit it to the heirs of
the givers.

Besides giving a lot for the court house,
Theophilus Hunter also gave a lot for a
masonic lodge. This lies on Morgan and
Dawson streets, Raleigh.

Theophilus Hunter, besides being a justice
and a Mason, was a Major in Colonel John Hin-
ton's Wake County Regiment during the Rev-
olution, afterwards Lieutenant Colonel, Coun-
ty Surveyor, and a member of Assembly sev-
eral times. He left a family of sons and
daughters who married Into the Hinton and
the Lane families and thus drew closer the
family kinship and solidarity of the first fami-
lies of Wake County. He lived at Spring
Hill, south-west of where the State Hospital
for the insane now is. The old mansion still

i

EARLY WORTHIES 11

remains on the eminence near this old site, re-
built into part of the State Hospital, the out-
door colonies for epileptics being located near
the spot. His son, Theophilus, Jr., inherited
Spring Hill and rebuilt it. The landed
possessions of these men were extensive, their
land reaching almost to Cary in a south-
westerly direction. Isaac Hunter, brother of
Theophilus, Sr., owned that plantation within
ten miles of which Raleigh should be located,
and his place was to the north of the city.
Descendants of both these men are among our
citizens today, notably the brother last men-
tioned has many although none of his own
name, the inheritance of blood having gone
through the female lines.

Theophilus Hunter Hill, a poet, and one of
our few singers, was a grandson of the Hunt-
ers of Spring Hill. At the very beginning of
the war of 1861, he published a slender volume
of lyrics and sonnets, and after the war another
volume.

He had genuine feeling and power of ex-
pressing it, and several sonnets of his are ex-
quisite, but for the most part his poetry
seems an echo of what had pleased him in his

78 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

wide reading of other men's writings. It is
not racy of the soil, and his Images are acade-
mic, but he shows nevertheless a vein of real
poetic Inspiration which time and the times
did not develop In the least, the stress and
strain of the war extinguishing poetic fancy,
and leisure and stimulation both being lack-
ing to the perfecting of his gift.

Joel Lane with his two brothers, Joseph and
Jesse, who were not so well known as himself,
also had a great deal to do with the early
shaping of Wake County.

O. W. Holmes, in a humorous poem, de-
scribing the portrait of his great-grandmother
when a young girl, plays with the idea of what
might have been the result if that dainty
maiden had chosen a different suitor, when
she answered 'Yes' to her life-mate, and thus
had thrown the stream of inheritance into a
different channel. He quaintly asks,

^'Should I be /, or would it he
One tenth another and nine tenths me?^^

In similar fashion we may well wonder what
would have been the differing traits In the like-
ness of the good people of Wake County If

EARLY WORTHIES 79

busy Joel Lane and his brothers had chosen
another path through the wilderness, and
those dozen others whose blood lives today
in many a citizen, "solid and stirring in flesh
and bone," had settled beside some other
river.

Joel Lane, who helped lay out the boun-
daries of Wake and the streets of our city,
land-owner, mine host of Bloomsbury Tav-
ern, Colonel in his father-in-law's Wake
County regiment, purveyor of supplies for
the Revolutionary Army, Associate Justice at
Wake County Court in 1771 and for many
years thereafter, delegate to the Provincial
Congress at New Berne, member of the Coun-
cil of Safety for this district. State Senator for
Wake for thirteen sessions of the Assembly,.
planter, speculator in real estate, did not let
all these activities exhaust his abundant ener-
gy. It v/ould not take many citizens such as
he to make a town progressive and lively even
in these strenuous days.

He seems vividly alive to the mind as he is
exhumed from old records dusty with the
passing of a century. His nature must have
been kindly, and his disposition sunny, to

EARLY WORTHIES 81

have made him so universally liked. His
house we have all seen, and it looks small and
plain enough to us; but it represented to the
people of that time what Governor Swain calls
''a rare specimen of architectural elegance."
Joel lived in this well-known house of his in
the sense of the often quoted words, "by the
side of the road, to be a friend to man;" and
in turning the pages of the records, those dry
bones of history, we may note and admire
the human attraction of the way people grav-
itated to his tavern for their various meetings.
It must have been pleasant staying there,
which speaks well for the character of mine
host, although we must wonder where in the
world he took care of so many legislators.
Probably, after the good old custom, log-cabin
"offices" or bachelor quarters flanked the
central dwelling, and in these he put his
gentlemen guests. Very few ladies went
traveling in those days.

Joel Lane's two wives were both daughters
of Colonel John Hinton, who lived near Neuse
River, and they brought him a fine colonial
family of six sons and six daughters. Joel
always adhered to the Church of England.

82 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The Lanes are descended from the Ralph
Lane who first came to North CaroHna with
the unlucky colony in 1S8S, and then sailed
back to England in 1586, being succeeded as
Governor by John White who left a handful
of lonely white settlers to lose themselves in
the western wilds, and become one of the
mysteries of fate to this day. The spirit of
the old seafaring Lanes still drove him "West-
ward Ho" and Ralph returned after a time.
Joel and his brothers were already the third
generation of Lanes born in the American
Colonies. Their descendants have half pop-
ulated Wake County, and have sent good
citizens to Alabama, to Tennessee, to Mis-
souri, and to far away Oregon. Among them
are numbered governors, judges, a general
and a vice-presidential candidate, a cabinet
officer, too, — all men in the public eye, while
they have also furnished scores more of excel-
lent folk of the race who, while not so con-
spicuous, have built up their own communities
more quietly for generations.

Joel Lane has been criticised because his sale
of land for the location of Raleigh seemed a
bit of sharp practice at the expense of his

EARLY WORTHIES 83

father-in-law, Colonel John Hinton, who also
had a square mile of land for sale; it is even
hinted that people generally resented this and
that it cost him his seat in the Assembly for
the next term thereafter. These hundred-
year-old rumors are hard to verify. Let us
use our imagination in all charity, and think
that he knew what a very pleasant home for
the State's central government would result
from his success.

He offered a square mile of land near Cary
as a free gift, should it be decided to place the
University of North Carolina there, and one
wonders why this offer was not accepted.
He was one of the first Board of Trustees of
the new institution, and had two grandsons
in the first graduating class. His friendliness
brought him friends and his friends showed
him favor, which was surely his desert. He
died in 1795, and his grave was plowed over
and obliterated by Mr. Peter Brown, a Scotch-
man and a lawyer, who acquired his home by
purchase, a few years after Joel Lane was
dead and gone. Mr Brown in his turn sold
the place to the first Mr. William Boylan,
early in the last century.

o ^

EARLY WORTHIES 85

A tablet to the memory of Joel Lane was
recently placed In the Municipal Building of
Raleigh by the Daughters of the Revolution.
One of Joel Lane's brothers was the progeni-
tor of the Lanes of Alabama and the other was
the ancestor of those who sought the far west
and became prominent there. Carolina Lane,
his sister, was mother of David L. Swain, and
lived her whole life in Buncombe County near
Asheville.

Another pre-revolutionary family connec-
tion was that of the Jones' of Wake County.
There seem to have been two distinct families
at first, no known kin, and living in different
parts of the county, both well known for in-
telligence and property acquired. Besides
this fact, two men, one from each family, bore
the unusual name of Nathaniel, and of these,
one named his eldest son after himself; hence
it requires more than an ordinary genealogist
to reconstruct their respective family trees,
and this all the more because they complicated
and confounded things still worse by inter-
marrying once or twice a few years later, after
the second generation had grown up.

The first Jones to reach Wake County was
Francis or Frank Jones, who settled on Crab-

86 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

tree Creek near Morrisvllle. His deed from
Lord Carteret bears the date 1749. He
bought more land adjoining in 1761. His
two sons, NathanielFirstofCrabtree, and Tig-
nail, or Tingall, were often mentioned in
County and State records. This Frank is
said to have been a brother of the father of
Willie Jones and General Allen Jones of Hali-
fax. If this is so then these two distinguished
men were own cousins to the Jones family of
Crabtree. This was the General Allen Jones
who gave his name to a penniless adventurer,
John Paul, whom he had befriended, and who
asked at parting, if the Jones surname might
be added to his own, promising that if permit-
ted so to add it he would also add fame to it
some day. This he did most wonderfully, as
all those who have thrilled at the story of
John Paul Jones and the Bon Homme Richard
can testify.

Perhaps this cousinship gives one of the
reasons for the residence in Raleigh of Willie
Jones, during the last years of his life. This
great Jeff ersonian bought the plantation where
Saint Augustine's School for the colored race
now stands, and in the spot where the garden

EARLY WORTHIES 87

of the school now Is, he Hes buried In an un-
marked grave. Though an agnostic, WiUie
Jones also gave the land for a Methodist
Church, where Edenton Street now stands,
according to several authorities. He died
about the first of the new century.

To return to the Jones family of Crabtree.
Nathaniel the second of Crabtree, married a
daughter of John KImbrough. His name
appears as member of Assembly from Wake
In both House and Senate before 1801. His
son, KImbrough Jones, was a member of the
Constitutional Assembly of 1835, and he has
many descendants. John KImbrough, the
father-in-law, does not come so often into the
records, being perhaps a man busy with his
plantation alone, but he owned more slaves
In 1800 than anyone else, except James HInton
and TIgnall Jones.

To continue the Wake County Joneses : Na-
thaniel Jones of White Plains near Cary, came
also from Eastern North Carolina. His an-
cestors are buried In old Bath Church, and he
came to what Is now Wake County in 1750.
Nathaniel of White Plains was, as I have said,
supposed to be no known kin to Nathaniel of

EARLY WORTHIES 89

Crabtree. His father was of Welsh blood,
and bore the Welsh-given name of Evan.
Nathaniel of White Plains married into the
Lane family, and his daughter Sarah married
her cousin, John Lane, son of Joel. They
went west, and their son, born in Tennessee
was named Joel Hinton Lane. Of course
there were many others of this family, but I
give this instance to show the strong mixture
of pioneering blood which must have been
the very elixir of life in that "Winning of the
West" which became the task of their genera-
tion.

Finding the records of all these intermar-
riages of the Jones families, and adding to
them the more recent connections of these
with the Cadwallader Joneses of Hillsborough
and noting the constant recurrence of familiar
Wake County surnames and Welsh patronym-
ics among the lists of children, one realizes
how hopeless and how useless it is to try and
untangle the skein of these families.

There stands, however, a desolate house
with vacant windows and grinning rafters, a
high four-square old house, dating from the
Revolutionary time, but which has been de-

90 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

serted many years. It stands near the town
of Cary to the west, and Its story was told to
me by an old lady who remembers traditions,
and who was somewhat kin to the former
owner. Fanning Jones, but who was not proud
of the relationship.

Whether his name means a relationship of
connection with the notorious Tory leader
who stole the Governor, or whether It is merely
a coincidence, no one can now declare, but he
is said for some vague reason to have forfeited
the regard of his patriotic relatives, and to
have been driven from the neighborhood for
that reason. The Old Tory, they called him.

Doctor Calvin Jones on whose plantation
Wake Forest College was located was a later
comer into the county from the North. He
sold his place to the Trustees of the Baptist
School for two thousand dollars, which was
considered cheap even in those days, for six
hundred acres, equipped with buildings.
Doctor Jones sold this at sacrifice In order to
move to Tennessee, and mentioning him here,
too early as to time, but In order to distinguish
him, we will add that ht was a distinguished
physician and that he had a fine war record

EARLY WORTHIES 91

for the war of 1812, having raised a Wake
County troop of horse for the army.

Besides these people whom I have called
out of the past, and not speaking of others
perhaps as prominent and as useful, we must
recall the forbears of many of our citizens of
today, living in simple homes, leaving no re-
cord of wealth, save the ownership of the acres
which they had won from the wilderness and
tilled for themselves with their own hands.
A random reading over of the tax payers
whose names were enrolled in Wake County
in the year 1800, such a list as appears in the
State records, yields many of the most re-
spected and honored names of today — many
names seen on church rolls, painted on sign-
boards, and on office windows, names which
have been marked by flags on Memorial days
in the cemetery and which only yesterday
have been engrossed and hung in the vesti-
bules of churches, names marked on service
flags with blue stars, and some after awhile
with golden ones.

The father and son, and the mother and
daughter also, these are those who have re-
deemed the wilderness, peopled the solitude,

92 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

fought in Revolutionary ranks in blue and
buff, and many years later have worn Confed-
erate grey. They have done the hardest
work of the new land, and the harder of the
land grown populous, they whose descendants
have fought and fallen on the fields of France
so lately, these plain people of whom the world
is made, and for whom it was made, and who
shall carry the work on by their descendants
into many a tomorrow.

CHAPTER IV

Raleigh the Capital Village

OLONEL CREECY In his "Grand-
fathers Tales'' describes the look
of the City of Raleigh in the
year 1800 and for some years
thereafter. He says, "It was a
town of magnificent distances, of unsightly
bramble bush, and briers, of hills and morass-
es, of grand old oaks and few Inhabitants, and
an onwelcome look to newcomers."

At that time the first State House stood
solitary on the Capitol Square and near It was
the famous sassafras tree, which had long
marked a wonderful deer stand whence forty
deer had been shot by one hunter's rifle, within
the memory of those then alive.

Governor Ashe was the first governor to
make Raleigh his permanent residence, and
he came to town In 1795, while the other State
officers also found It necessary to "go out there
in the woods to live, and help with the govern-
ment." The first Governor's mansion was a
plain frame building on Fayettevllle Street
about where the Raleigh Banking and Trust

]93]

94 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Company's building now stands. By 1800
there were two hotels. The first one, Casso's,
still stands on the corner of Morgan and
Fayetteville Streets opposite the State Lib-
rary Building, is especially in excellent repair,
and were the fire escapes and such modern ad-
ditions taken away, would remain much as it
used to be when the stages rolled to the
door. The second was called the Eagle, which
was demolished in April 1922, to erect a new
State Department Building

One handsome residence had been built in
Raleigh which is standing today, and has
been kept in repair, remarkable beside for
the fact that it is still inhabited by the re-
presentatives of the family that built it.
There is no other residence so old in town or
county today, beside ''the old Burke Hay-
wood Mansion" on New Berne Avenue, built
in the year 1794, of which we may confidently
say, as it is today so it was almost identi-
cally, more than a hundred years ago.

There were homes and stores along Fayette-
ville Street — small frame buildings long since
burned or demolished; the Joel Lane house
stood near where it now stands, but facing

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 95

South Boylan Avenue; the Mordecai place
was partly built; the old Andrew Johnson
birthplace, judging by the style of architecture
was then In existence, but tradition says that
It stood near the plot where Tucker's Store
was built Immediately after the war of '61.
From thence It was moved at that time to
Cabarrus Street, where It remained until 1900,
when the local Committee of the Colonial
Dames of America had it taken down board
by board, and reconstructed, exactly, in Pul-
len Park, where it is now preserved as a relic.
There was no church edifice in Raleigh in
1800, although services were frequently held
by the several denominations in the State
House.

There were no common schools in all North
Carolina, and but few pay schools. In the
year 1801, Raleigh asks for state aid in estab-
lishing an academy, and also petitions for the
use of Burke Square (where the Governor's
mansion now stands) for Its site.

In 1802 the plans for the building were made,
fifty feet long and twenty-four feet wide,
with fireplaces at each end both above and
below stairs. My authority says brick, but

96 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the expression is so vague, perhaps it merely
means that the great chimneys were brick,
and not the whole building. In 1807 a build-
ing for a "Female Department" was added.
This was one-story and smaller. The school
was supported partly by tuition fees and part-
ly by private subscriptions to bonds or shares.
All the State officers' names of that day and
those of nearly all the townsfolk besides were
to be found on its lists.

In 1813 another building was built, the two
larger buildings were insured for two thousand
dollars each, while the Female Department
carried two hundred and fifty dollars. Tui-
tion was nine dollars a year and the rolls of
honor and other school notices published in
the newspapers of the time show that many of
the pupils were from other places and boarded
in town. By the year 1817 one hundred
eighty pupils were in attendance. The first
teacher engaged was named German Guthrie,
the second Maurin Delaigny, a French refugee,
a Huguenot minister, who afterwards went to
Charleston and became pastor of the old
Huguenot Church there.

In 1810 came Doctor William Mc.Pheeters
who was principal of the Academy for many

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 97

years, and also ''Town Pastor," preaching on
Sundays in the State House and holding Sun-
day School there. His salary was eight hun-
dred dollars a year. His school throve, and
soon he required assistants In his work. The
course included Latin, Greek, Mathematics,
English, Geography, and Bible, and his
scholars ranged from beginners In reading to
those who would go next year to the Univer-
sity. No Latin or Greek was taught to the
girls, but a course In ^'alphabetical samplers"
and wool work took the place of the classics
for them.

There were other schools In the county, and
some were very efficient, especially the one
at Wake Forest which afterwards was enlarged
into Wake Forest College. Besides this one
the schools were more or less Intermittent, be-
ing private enterprises.

One of the Raleigh schools deserves mention
for the oddity of Its human Interest.

John Chavis was a negro slave, who was
sent by his master to Princeton College, and
educated as a Presbyterian minister. This
was done as an experiment on the part of his
owner, to see what could be done with a

98 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

negro's mind, as I have been told by the
older people. John had a good understand-
ing and a docile disposition. When, after his
years of training, he was returned home an
educated man of some refinement, it became a
problem to know what should be done with
him. He was an ordained Presbyterian min-
ister; he could not be sent back to the negro
quarters; nor could he be recognized as a
social equal. He was set free, and he was per-
mitted to use his learning in instruction of
youth. He taught in Raleigh in 1808, in-
structing poor white children in the day, and
colored youth at night. He afterwards kept
school in other parts of the State, and prepared
many prominent young men for college with
great success. I have heard stories told of
how on occasion, he might be at some white
planter's house at meal time, and how the
plantation darkies would come to peer into
the windows of the dining room at the Great
House, to see "dat nigger John Chavis" sit-
ting over at his side table by himself, but
nevertheless, actually eating his dinner in the
same room with Old Massa and Old Miss.
That was the way the problem was finally

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 99

solved as to the exact social position of John
Chavis.

Before leaving the subject of educational
uplift in Raleigh, let me chronicle the doings
of the leading matrons of the town in the
year 1802. They then presented a pair of
globes to the scientific equipment of the Infant
University at Chapel Hill. The names of
of the donors were as follows: S. W. Potter,
Eliza Haywood, Sarah Polk, Anna White,
Martha McKethan, Margaret Casso, Eliza
Williams, Nancy Bond, Hannah Paddison,
Susannah Parish, Ann O'Brien, E. H. P.
Smith, Nancy Haywood, Priscilla Shaw,
Rebecca Williams, Winifred Mears. This is
probably a list of all the ladies who made up
Raleigh society at that date, and shows these
good women ready and efficient in helping
worthy causes as their descendants and suc-
cessors have ever since striven to do.

A brick mansion was built about 1813, just
opposite the foot of Fayetteville Street, and
outside the then city limits. It stood where
the Centennial School stands now. It was a
large simple building, with no architectural
pretensions, and was paid for out of the pro-
ceeds of lots In the City of Raleigh sold for the

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RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 101

purpose, being those which remained in the
possession of the State up to that time.
These lots did not bring as great a sum as was
hoped, by reason of the hard times prevaihng
after the War of 1812. This mansion, al-
ways known as the Governor's Palace, is the
one occupied by all Governors in succession
from 1813 up to the War of '61, and Gover-
nor Swain adds in dignified phrase, ''The
Executive office was then, as now, contiguous
to the Palatial Residence."

The little town of those early days was in
feeling and deportment always the capital.
We read of plays staged, of processions and
festivities, of speakings patriotic, and speak-
ings commemorative, and of regular religious
services all held in the State House, which was
then even more than since, the center, and one
might say, almost the circumference as well
of all Raleigh's social life.

Banquets in celebration of the national an-
niversaries, not on a strictly temperance plan,
were held at the hotels and occasionally out
of doors at the mineral spring near the Palace.
These inns were good ones, because of the
many gentlemen who had to be entertained

102 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

at certain seasons of the year, whose number
would have strained the small private accom-
modations of the place.

On great occasions tables were even set in
the rotunda of the State House and toasts
were drunk on patriotic excuse to ''every
State in the Union," and the fact that there
were not nearly so many states then as there
are now is the reason the devoted banqueters
lived through the test.

The census of Raleigh on March 23, 1807, as
published in the Raleigh Minerva, gives white
males 255, white females 178, freedmen 33,
slaves 270, total 786, families 85. Governor
Swain also gives these figures. The apparent
overplus of bachelors in Raleigh at that time
is noticeable, there being seventy-five or more
unattached men. This must mean that the
State officials were written down as residents
whether they had brought their families to
live in the town or not.

Raleigh had a commission form of govern-
ment in those early days, similiar to that of
the City of Washington now, being governed
by the direct authority of the Assembly. It
also had a town watch which patroled the un-

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 103

lighted Streets at night, and kept the slaves
from wandering abroad. There were twenty-
classes who took turns. This same plan was
universally followed In the larger towns
throughout the South.

The names of the Captains of the Watch
for the year 1811 were Henry Potter, Isaac
Lane, William Scott, William Boylan, Joseph
Gales, Thomas Emond, Southey Bond, John
Wyatt, Joseph Peace, Samuel Goodwin, Bev-
erly Daniel, William Peck, Willis Rogers,
Sherwood Haywood, William Jones, John
Raboteau, James Coman, Benjamin King,
Robert Cannon, and Jacob Johnson. This
last name was that of the father of the Presi-
dent Andrew Johnson.

We may gather a good many good home-
sounding names from this collection, although
they made their rounds more than a century
ago, and all sleep dreamless sleep tonight while
others are watching.

The war of 1812 having been fought to a
glorious finish, and the Algerian pirates having
been smoked out by Admiral Decatur, the
America name became more respected and
the flag more distinguished abroad, while

104 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

England was no longer a present fear to our
nation as it had been since the Revolution.
Our nation began to feel its full destiny as
favored of heaven. We might say of ourselves
in our growing vigor and importance as a
nation,

^'No-pent up Utica contracts our pozvers.^^

This happy time when there was little politi-
cal or sectional bitterness or other jealousy
was called the ''era of good feeling." The.
Revolution was receding into the historic past,
and its heroes loomed grander, and less dis-
tinct, as their doings passed out of ordinary
day-light into the shadowed aisles of history.
The great consequences of these deeds were
more and more realized, as time unfolded its
changes.

There was in this village capital of North
Carolina ninety years ago one treasure which
we would give a great deal to possess, and to
be able to point to, in our Capitol of today. I
refer to the famous statue of General George
Washington, first President of the United
States, which was made by Canova.

In November, 1815, the Assembly of North
Carolina passed a bill authorizing the purchase

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 105

of a Statue of the great and good George
Washington, to be placed in the State House,
and setting no limit to the cost of such a work
of art.

The people of North Carolina had a right
to be proud of their appreciative admiration
for Washington, and the delight they took to
honor his memory honored themselves also.

It was a charming bit of extravagance, and
not like the strange freaks of spending that
attack stingy folk once in a lifetime, but the
result of pure idealism, — the fact of a heroic
figure impressing the imagination of a whole
people, so that they were intent upon pouring
out the precious ointment of their hearts to
his memory.

The motion for obtaining this statue was
first made in the House by Thomas Spencer
of Hyde County. His descendants, if there
are any, should be proud of their ancestor for
this deed.

Governor Miller, the then executive, con-
sulted Senator Turner and Senator Macon in
Washington, and they in turn consulted
Thomas Jefferson in his retirement at Monti-
cello. It was decided that only the best was

106 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

worthy of the greatest American and of the
State of North CaroHna, and so the Ambassa-
dor to Italy from the Federal Government was
commissioned to bespeak a portrait statue of
Washington from Canova. Canova was the
greatest sculptor then alive, unless Thorvald-
sen of Sweden be named as his equal.

When asked to undertake the commission
from the State of North Carolina, he put
aside many orders to accept it, on account, he
said, of his extreme admiration for the genius
of the great Washington, and for his noble
deeds. The statue was executed in Carrara
marble, white as snow. The figure was larger
than life. When finished, it was brought to
Boston on a United States war vessel com-
manded by Captain Bainbridge, a hero of the
Pirates' War. From Boston it was trans-
shipped to Wilmington on a coastwise vessel,
and it arrived there in 1821. From Wilming-
ton to Fayetteville, it was floated up the Cape
Fear River.

William Nichols, father of Captain John
Nichols, who lived at that time in Raleigh and
was in charge of the improvement of the Capi-
tol and of other building for the State at the

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 107

University, was put in charge also of this
task. It was for him to contrive means of
transporting those heavy marbles over the
long rough miles between Fayetteville and
Raleigh. That he did so successfully is an-
other tribute to his practical ability. On the
ninth of November, 1821, word came that the
wagons bearing the precious blocks of marble
were near, the entire population of Raleigh,
Governor, State officials, and many citizens
of other parts of the State as well, went out
in procession along the Fayetteville road to
meet the train of wagons, and bring them
into the city with a band and speeches and
rejoicings.

Colonel William Polk pronounced the ora-
tion. He was living in Raleigh as president
of the First State Bank. He was a Revolu-
tionary veteran, and had been a friend of
Washington, and personally associated with
Lafayette. He was father of Leonidas K.
Polk, afterwards the '^fighting bishop," and
was cousin to President Polk.

His speech on this occasion was solemn and
stately, and he rhetorically declared that it
was but meet and fitting that the degenerate

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RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 109

Italian nation should add the refinement of
art to the rough but vigorous patriotism of the
American Republic, now far more than Italy
the Inheritor of the spirit of ancient Rome.
This is but the impression of a long past
perusal and not a direct quotation.

The statue, when unpacked and set in posi-
tion In the rotunda of the old State House by
Mr. Nichols seemed, to the critical eyes of
many who had seen Washington In the flesh,
a good likeness as regarded the countenance.
Our good people, not aware of artistic license,
were, however, quite struck dumb by the fact
that the Father of His Country was dressed in
a Roman Consul's costume, with toga, bare
legs, and sandaled feet. This made them
wonder and stare.

Washington was represented seated, with
a tablet on one knee, on which he was writing
his farewell address with a stylus. The atti-
tude was balanced and graceful, the face calm
and grave. The figure sat upon a Roman
curule chair, and this rested upon a pedestal,
which was sculptured on all four sides with
bas-reliefs, showing notable scenes In the
public service of Washington.

110 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The sculpture exhibited Canova at his best,
in which the stone was made to take a finish
that seemed almost as smooth to the touch as
it appeared soft to the eye, so perfect was
the working, so delicate the surface. The
great Lafayette, when he came to Raleigh in
1825, vouched for the correctness of the like-
ness as he surveyed it. The statue was the
pride of the people of North Carolina. Judge
Gaston said of them, "Limited in their means,
plain in their habits, economical in their ex-
penditures, on this subject they indulged in
generous munificence." It was suggested by
some practical soul, that a statue so valuable
being now placed in a building not fireproof,
should be mounted on low wheels to permit of
its being moved in case of fire, but this sugges-
tion was laughed to scorn. It is hard to guess
now, in this age of wheels, why it was thought to
be so undignified, so very funny to mount the
statue in this way, for the sake of its safety.
Had this been done, we might well possess it
today, for it might have been easily saved
from destruction.

Only for about ten years did the State own
this art treasure, for all of that period easily

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 111

the finest example of high art In all America.
The mother of the writer saw this statue in
in 1830, and though but a child at the time,
she ever remembered it with a vivid impression
and has described it minutely to her children.
Mrs. A. B. Andrews had a most exact picture
of it, from an Italian source, entirely authentic.
Also there is an engraving with Lafayette and
Miss Haywood standing looking at it. In
the year 1910 owing to the indefatigable effort
of the Hall of History, a cast had been made
from the model, and sent as a gift from the
King of Italy. The lost treasure in its beauty
is a vivid personal regret. The poor muti-
lated fragments of the trunk and pedestal
which occupy one corner of the Hall of History
speak eloquently of its fate but tell little of
its glory.

Canova the great Italian sculptor, was at
the height of his fame and reputation when he
made the statue. He was called the true in-
heritor of the classical tradition. He always
used the mannerisms of the antique statues
he studied, as well as followed the real beauty
of their conception. He is now somewhat
superseded in artistic esteem being consid-

112 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ered too artificial, too smooth, although many
lovely works of his are still cherished.

The old Raleigh Community revelled in
processions as well as banquets. Fourth of
July was always a fair chance to enjoy a
parade. Hear the account of a celebration
of the ever-glorious Fourth which took place
in the year 1809. ''At twelve o'clock, a pro-
cession of citizens and strangers, with Captain
Calvin Jones' troop of cavalry, formed at the
State House during the ringing of the State
House, Court House, and Town bells, and the
firing of the cannon. Being seated in the
Commons Chamber, an ode in honor of this
day, composed for the occasion, was sung by
a choir of seventy voices. Reverend Mr.
Turner (the principal of the Academy) de-
livered an oration. At three o'clock the com-
pany sat down to an excellent dinner prepared
by Mr. Casso (keeper of the Hotel), which
was served in the State House. Colonel Polk
and Mr. Potter presided and toasts were
drunk to the Governor, Mr. Nash, to the Su-
preme Court of North Carolina, to Literature,
Science and Art, to the University of North
North Carolina, to the Constitution of North
Carolina, and to 'The social circles of life.' "

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 113

It was the custom of Doctor William Mc-
Pheeters a few years later to hold a sunrise
service on the Fourth of July, and to preach a
patriotic sermon, which was always well attend-
ed, and very impressive. Reverend Drury
Lacy kept up this custom of the town after-
ward. Following this came an oration by
some good speaker, the reading of the Dec-
laration of Independence, a procession of all
the Sunday School children down Fayette-
ville Street to the 'Talatial Residence" and
then half way back again to the sound of the
bells of the town. Dispersing there, everybody
attended a picnic and barbecue in Parrish's
Grove, at the corner of Davie and Blount
Streets, and opportunity was given for all the
courting and matchmaking that the daylight
would hold. At nightfall, the streets being
unlighted, and the ways long, the population
called it a day and went home.

In calling up pictures of the town that then
was, I have failed to mention the beginnings
of the various religious denominations, al-
though by the time the State House was
burned there were three churches in Raleigh.
The Presbyterians had a congregation organ-

114 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ized in 1806, but as Dr. McPheeters was
the only regular pastor in town for a long time,
services were held in the State House, and they
did not build until 1817. The early Method-
ists led the way, and built a little church where
Edenton Street Church now stands, and by
the next year the Baptists also had a small
church building finished.

In 1820 the Episcopal Church was organ-
ised, and by 1826 they had begun a church on
the present site of Christ Church. Later we
find Duncan Cameron chairman of the build-
ing committee which made Christ Church of
today, one of our really lovely buildings.

There had also been in Raleigh for some
time a sort of crazy parson, a Mr. Clenden-
ning, who had a pet heresy and preached it
on Sundays. On weekdays he sold goods over
his counter, and had plenty of ability and com-
mon sense to make money in his mercantile
business. He seems to have been a sort of
town joke.

Having tried in the foregoing chapters to
bring back the idea of the old times as they
really were, we must next try to recall some of
the great men, and draw their characters,
some of those who moved about the streets

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 115

of our old capital, and made Impression on
our Institutions. Many were not natives of
Raleigh, and yet were nevertheless a part of
Its life, and a boast, to be pointed out to
strangers sojourning In our gates as they mov-
ed on our common ways. We must revive
the shock of the burning of the State House.
We must learn something of the struggle and
final successful anchoring of the State capital
here In Raleigh, for when the State House was
burned, of course the other claimants revived
their claims.

Beside this we must bring out those old
tales which make former days alive, and re-
store to us the atmosphere so long dispersed,
together with the likeness of those who were
a part of the passing panorama.

We must go down the roaring forties, and
make ourselves by all means catch the feel-
ing that pervaded the world before the War
of '61, and thereby moulded history; not for-
getting that very often feeling Is far stronger
than policy.

The history of a people Is the history of the
the minds in It, as worked upon by the soul-
currents of the age, which pass no one knows
how, like the wind that bloweth where It
llsteth.

CHAPTER V

Early Life and Thought

E must now forget the path we
have traveled to our present day-
conception of things, throw away-
all those beliefs and ideas
which have crystallized in our
lifetimes, and think away modern conveniences
and conditions and a collection of uncertain-
ties and questions that exist no more. If there
is "no new thing under the sun," yet old ideas
are seen in very novel combinations as time
goes on.

Look at the politics of those elder folk, and
by politics I mean the prevailing conceptions
of right and expediency in governmental poli-
cies, rather than party or partizanship; what
real correspondences do they show to the
political questions of today .^^

Look at their economics. With the whole
continent beyond him to choose a residence
from, what need was there for the old North
Carolina farmer to intensify, to economize, or
to farm constructively.^

[ii6]

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 117

He need not suffer In an environment that
did not suit him, he could go west, he could
take up new land to replace the fields he had
cleared and exhausted. Nothing hindered the
restlessness of the frontiersman.

Fiscal and money problems were not well
understood even in Europe of this time. The
question of the best way to guard the money
capital needed for all this expansion, had been
settled neither in theory nor experience by any
financier. While the time of the formation
of the constitutions of the United States and
of the several States had revealed a farsighted
statesmanship which it would he hard to
match today, yet all was a great experiment.
No one knew how well it was going to work,
and only time could reveal its flaws. We dis-
agree honestly today on many matters, but
we have settled most of the questions which
exercised our grandfathers.

A caustic wit has called Democracy ''the
rule of the planless man," but it was not plans
which were lacking in that seething time when
remnants of old English monarchical conser-
vatism and the newest and wildest of French
Revolutionary theories were striving to com-
bine into something different from either.

118 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

"The broadening of human thought Is ever
a slow and a complex process." Our old time
Federalist did not correspond to any of the
political partizanshlps of today and his party
passed away with the echoes of the War of
1812. In his time he represented the conser-
vative element, but no special privilege save
that of education, and the able leadership It
gave.

The leaders of the Jeifersonian popular
party distrusted the educated few, because as
they said, they were '*too far from the people
to understand their ways." The old Feder-
alists had for their successors the Whigs, while
the JefFersonlan, afterwards called the Re-
publican, and lastly the Democratic party,
represented the ideals of liberty as advocated
in the French Revolution.

England of just after the Revolution was a
very conservative, hard England, but In
America no such degeneration of the demo-
cratic gospel took place; the rise of the plain
people, the opportunity of the common man
to become uncommon, was the opportunity of
all in America.

Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory" as he was
called, born In North Carolina, called to office

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 119

from Tennessee, well expressed his party as
President and as popular hero.

In politics North Carolina was naturally
democratic, but the majority of her leading
intellects happened to be Whigs, and many of
her best prophets were without honor in their
own country.

The money organization of the United
States was the field of many experiments.
Jackson was of the opinion that money matters
were best left to each sovereign state, and so
he aboHshed the Bank of the United States,
distributing its surplus pro rata among the
states. This institution was doubtless a very
imperfect one, but had afforded a central
stable valuation of credit. Now there were
as many values and measures as there were
states, all the way from the "wild cat" banks
of the west, to the conservative institutions
of New England. Following the changeless
law of finance, all the better money was hoard-
ed and the worse put in circulation. Each
state had a State Bank which bore the same
relation to its finances as did the United
States bank to the United States funds, and
there came to be a strange mixture of money.

120 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

with SO many banks issuing notes which were
more or less good at a shorter or longer
distance from the banks of their origin.

The habit of mind about money is a great
part of the mental furniture of a man, because
it disposes him to honest dealing and honest
success, or disposes him to the taking of too
heavy risks.

The early years of the nineteenth century
were far too much given to the sporting con-
ception of things, and loose ideas about money
have given more trouble to our people than
has any fallacy which has survived Into the
present.

When, after the unlucky Democratic admin-
istration of Van Buren, the scale tipped to-
ward the Whigs, every one but the inside
bosses thought of Henry Clay as the Whig
choice for President.

It Is not clear just how his nomination was
defeated, but defeated It was, and Harrison
won It, Tyler, who succeeded him, being Vice-
President, after Harrison had only been a few
weeks in office, and had died. Tyler proved
not to be a Whig at all, but merely an admirer
of the man Clay.

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 121

So far as we can see, he was nominated Vice-
President because of his gift of ready tears
over the defeat of his friend. Next term,
1844, Clay lost the election to the Democratic
candidate, this time by his "Raleigh Letter."
This historic letter was sent to a friend of
Clay's in Alabama, and published by him,
and tradition says it was penned under a great
white oak in what was lately the yard of Col-
onel A. B. Andrews on Blount Street. In this
letter he advocated the admission of Texas to
the Union in due time, and thus set all Aboli-
tion New England against his candidacy.
He opposed admitting it at once, and thus set
his Southern friends against him.

Tradition says that he showed this letter to
Judge Badger before he sent it, and that Bad-
ger said, ''That letter will lose you your can-
didacy," to which he replied in the often
quoted words, ''I would rather be right than
be president."

In ideals Clay was broadly national, and
he was noted as a compromiser, and a soother
of men's passions. Personally he was the
very ideal man in the imagination of the spirit-
ed youth of his day, ideal in faults as well as in
virtues.

Christ Church Rectory, once the State Bank, whose

FIRST president WAS CoLONEL VV. PoLK. It

WAS ONE OF THE FIRST THREE BRICK

BUILDINGS IN RaLEIGH

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 123

Old men have told me that since the War
they had felt homeless as regarded political
affiliation, that they were and had always been
''Henry Clay Whigs" and nothing else. Of
his great body of adherents it might be said,
"His name was all the politics they knew."

Education in the South in those days as ob-
tained by the richer classes was thorough, but
there were no standardized secondary schools
and scarcely any conception of what they
might mean.

The average country citizen of those days
was likely to hold the view of Huckleberry
Finn's father: "Your father and your mother
couldn't read nor write, and you think you are
better than your father because you can. I'll
take it out of you!" Planters might employ
governesses and tutors, and send their children
to pay schools, but common people living in
rural isolation had no advantages at all in
schooling.

Bartlett Yancey is authority for the state-
ment that in Caswell County in 1800 one half
the adult white population could not read and
write, and that this great proportion grew
greater rather than less. In Wake County

124 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

things must have been better, but how much
better we do not know how to discover.

Judge Gaston, In a Fourth of July toast In
1826, speaks of North CaroHna as sadly prone
in matters educational "to stumble and floun-
der on at a lazy and lagging pace," and again
in 1827, the ''Legislature habitually looked
with indifference upon education."

A belief among the leaders that this was
poor policy was growing each year, and many
tentative debates discussing possibilities of es-
tablishing common schools were beginning to
be held; small appropriations were being laid
aside to accumulate looking toward the es-
tablishing of an adequate fund for future use;
but the fact remained that there was little or
no general demand for any sort of free school
education up to the year 1840 or '41.

The population of Wake County outside of
the city of Raleigh gradually lessened, and be-
came more scattered than formerly through
the rural districts. The filling up of the west,
which had begun with the century and shortly
before, drew thousands of North Carolina
people over the turnpikes to Alabama and
Tennessee and far away to Alissouri and the

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 125

"New Purchase" as it was called. At the
close of the Revolution the population of
North Carolina approximated the same num-
ber as did that of New York State, but from
the war of 1812 until well Into the forties, the
population of North Carolina was at a com-
parative standstill.

This emigration, the following of families
after their pathfinders, the talk of the golden
west and all that, made a great appeal to the
imagination of those who stayed behind.

Another great subject for discussion which
grew more and more heated was the question
of slavery, and attack and defence of this
"Institution" was mooted from one end of the
United States to the other.

If the cotton gin had lain in the womb of
time for another fifty years, slavery in the
South might have well become what the
doctors call a self-limiting disease and might
have followed the course of gradual extinction
it had begun In the northern States.

Because of the obvious path of profit, slavery
grew from more to more, especially as the
south-west was opened up.

126 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

New England, always didactic, began to al-
lude first with too much truth to Southern
illiteracy, then as time went on to express her
conscientious scruples as to the sufferance of
slavery in any part of the Union.

Nothing in the general life and thought of
the New England states had impressed the
South with admiration, the two conceptions of
life being at variance. Nothing made our
people imagine that moral excellence was
greater there than here, and these reproaches
were felt undeserved and fell upon ears irritat-
►ed with constant clash of warring sentiments
and opinions. It was as though the sister
who lived at home and needed only walk
paved streets, should count for a sin the drag-
gled skirts of her whose way had lain through
briars and muddy ways.

That New England was the nearest right
if not most righteous, was never acknowledged
at the South, and in New England the fact
of conditions and not deliberate choice was
carefully ignored.

Much ink was spilt, and hard sayings on
each side grew harder, and anger bred pre-
judice, and aspersions against slavery made

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 127

New England's educational example odious.
Justice in this world can never be perfect, but
perfect justice is somehow what every man
claims for his own. Raleigh, the center of
North Carolina's political life, heard many a
speech about this bitter controversy, many an
echo of the ever growing dispute.

Another subject of prime interest then, as
now, was the building of roads, and added to
that the projecting of canals. It scarcely
seems possible, but the idea was at one time
entertained that the City of Raleigh must be
connected with the sea by means of the small
creeks that run to Neuse River and a system
of canals and locks, in connection with that,
stream, in order to have a commercial outlet.

The State of New York had recently com-
pleted the Erie Canal, and the fashion thus,
set was admired, — this before the days of
railroads.

A Scotch engineer engaged for the State by
Mr. Peter Brown made calculations on this
sort of a plan, on a salary of several times the
pay of the Governor. In the early twenties
one trip is said to have been made to New
Berne and back, with many difficulties. Boat,
a scow; captain, James Murray.

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EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 129

It was calculated that a canal was practical
from Hunter's Mill on Walnut Creek, the pre-
cise spot of the Waterworks pumping station
down to Neuse River, the fall being sufficient,
but that a better port would be at the spot
near Bloomsbury Park where Lassiter's Mill
stands now, and a better canal down Crabtree
Creek to the river, though it might have to be
longer.

These wild schemes had to be discussed be-
cause prices, owing to wagon transportation,
were enormous. The salary mark was far,
far lower than it is today, and yet calico
brought one dollar per yard, broadcloth was
worth from seven to ten dollars, and sugar was
at the figure of forty-five cents a pound. Nails
came by the dozen. Truly it was not the
choice of frugality for its elevating charm
which influenced our ancestors toward plain
living, but necessity, and that of the sternest.

No wonder they listened to fairy tales about
easy transportation down Neuse River, where,
as today, at some seasons, a terrapin could
carry flour on his back all the way from Raleigh
to New Berne without wetting his load.

One romantic thing, as we call it now, was
part of daily lives then, and we should be glad

130 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

to experience the thrill ourselves. The stage
from the North came In over the Loulsburg
Road, and went southward to Fayetteville,
stopping at Casso's tavern on Fayetteville
Street. Three times a week at first it came,
then daily. The sweet, flourishing notes of
the coach horns could be heard as the lumber-
ing vehicle came into town, and rolled up near
the Capitol. This was the link with the
world outside. The mail came In, the north-
ern papers with their European news, slowly
brought to them In ships, and already more
than a month old; letters at fifty and twenty-
five cents apiece, according to distance and
weight. Strangers would dismount for a
moment to stretch their cramped legs a bit,
while the fresh horses were put to; or would
dismount and spend the night at the tavern.

It was a day's trip from Warrenton to
Raleigh, a days' trip from Fayetteville to
Raleigh. The passing of the stages was the
event of the day, and reminds us of the ac-
count In one of Mark Twain's Inimitable books
of the passing of the New Orleans packet up
the river In his youth. If any one had wished
to know the census of the able-bodied popu-

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 131

latlon of Raleigh, he could doubtless have
stepped down from the stage and counted
them. Not one would wish to be absent when
the stage rolled in.

Of course people read newspapers in those
days, and there were good ones, although the
sheets were small, and had no sporting page,
and no Sunday edition. The editorials were
dignified and well written, and compare with-
out disparagement with what we get today,
and these weeklies were well read inside and
out, as newspapers are not any longer read
today, since the armistice.

The Whig paper of the earHest time was
called the Raleigh Minerva, and was publish-
ed by William Boylan, the first of the name to
come to Raleigh. About six months earlier a
paper of rival politics, a Democratic or Jeffer-
sonian organ, was begun by Joseph Gales, an
Englishman. He had been driven away from
his printing office in Shefiield, England, be-
cause of his sympathy with the French Revo-
lution and its very radical developments, such
ideas being hateful even to the very mobs,
because of the excesses of the Terrorists.
He was in some way connected with Doctor

132 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Priestley, who was driven away from Birming-
ham by mob persecution, a man a hundred
years ahead of his time, who also was forced
to spend the last of his days in America.

Joseph Gales came to America with Doctor
Priestley and was for a time in Philadelphia.
Then he came to Raleigh early in the nine-
teenth century, and the paper he edited here
bore the same name as his former journal in
Sheffield, ''The Register.'" For many years
Joseph Gales was state printer. Besides these
two, there was a third sheet, The Star which
often changed hands, although it was pub-
lished for years.

As to books, the City of Raleigh in early
days was poorly off. Of course some owned
a few books, which were read and re-read, and
learned almost by heart, to good purpose, and
letters and papers of the time show that liter-
ary style was far from bad. No books were
printed in the state until years later, save a
few law books. The list given in Doctor
Battle's History of the University of North
Caroli^ia, of the College library of the first
of the century past, will give some idea of the
scarcity of all that we should call readable.

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 133

Most of the works were heavy and solid
enough to kill the largest rat when made into
a dead-fall and allowed to drop upon him.
Doctor Battle states that this was the use
made of Saint Augustine's works in folio and
other substantial volumes which were borrow-
ed from the University library for this express
purpose. However that may be, there was
little to read in Raleigh then but law, classics
and theology, with a very few novels which
were heavy to hold if not to read. I have
before me a copy of ''Sir Charles Grandison,^^
owned in Raleigh in 1813 or '14, which is as
large as a family Bible, has two columns of
rather small print, and seven hundred pages.
This light work was a reprint from the seven
volumes originally issued, and is dated 1810,
printed in London.

The eating and drinking which built up life
from its physical side was much like the food
of today, and yet unlike in many ways.

Chicago beef was not to be had, nor was
there an abattoir, nor an ice plant. Local sup-
plies were all that obtained, and much more
pork and bacon was used by all classes.
Vegetables were raised the same as now, but

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EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 135

the COW pea was considered food for beasts
alone, and the useful tomato was unknown.
Canning was a thing unpracticed, although
dried fruit was plentifully used. A little
"pound for pound" preserves for state oc-
casions was kept on hand from year to year.
Sugar was scarce and molasses of the home-
grown sort took the place of it. The import-
ed molasses was most delicious, being far
better than it has been since, and was the ac-
cepted sweetening for many foods. Hospitali-
ty laid stress on one sort of refreshment that
is but a sad memory to the thirsty. Imported
and domestic wines and liquors were used in
great variety, and every gentleman considered
it his duty to have such things on hand for the
chance guest, however he might prefer to
abstain himself. Hence the mahogany cel-
larets which still grace many old fashioned
dining rooms, and the portly glass decanters
which are now set back on the china-closet
shelves, but used to stand out within reach.
As regards the furniture that we are still
carefully collecting, are we not sure that the
things then bought and admired are still the
most beautiful that are obtainable.^ Do we

136 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

not regard thus all old sofas and desks and
secretaires and what not?

Has there ever been more satisfactory silver-
ware than the gracefully shaped spoons and
pierced fruit baskets that we treasure with
pride and buy now and then for great prices?

Household work was far greater then than
it is now, and the notable housewife must be
like Solomon's virtuous woman in her cease-
less activities. Providing work and super-
vision for the many and lazy servants made her
rise early and be ceaselessly busy. Even
Colonel Byrd, though not enthusiastic about
the men, acknowledges that the women of
early North Carolina were a thrifty race, and
we may be sure that they knew how to sew
and knit and dye and weave and embroider
and care for meats and supervise all the varied
domestic arts.

It is interesting to note that in the twenties
and the thirties young folk were considered
very mannerless and unmanageable.

The spinning of "street yarn" was much dep-
recated, the extreme idleness of young men
was cerlsured in private letters and in the
newspapers, and older folk were caused much

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 137

anxiety by the strange tendency of the
young girls to dress up and go out gadding
when there was work for them to do at home!
All these many things, great and small, go
to make up the tenor of the lives of our fore-
runners. Sometimes the small are more impor-
tant than the great in filling up the many de-
tails which add most to the picture, and it
is a picture that I am trying, awkwardly
perhaps, but anxiously, to place before your
eyes.

CHAPTER VI.
GianH of Those Days

OLONEL WILLIAM POLK,

coming fromMecklenburgCounty
to Raleigh very early in its history,
was a figure of great prominence
here, and would still have been
were his adoptive city a far larger place. He
came of that well known Polk family which
lived in Mecklenburg before the Revolution,
and was cousin to President Polk. In his
youth he was an eye-witness to the signing
of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independ-
ence, and it is so stated in the Life of Leonidas
K. Polk. He enlisted in the Continental Army
when a mere boy and was In active ser-
vice all through the Revolutionary War. He
was twice wounded, very severely at the battle
of Germantown. He suffered that sad winter
at Valley Forge with Washington, and he was
also present with him at Yorktown.

He was twice married, his first wife dying
before he came to Raleigh. His second wife
was a i^Jiss Hawkins of Warrenton, In Warren

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 139

County. She bore him nine children of whom
the second was Leonidas K. Polk.

Colonel Polk came to Raleigh in the year
1799 to become the first president of the State
Bank, serving without compensation. His
home was a large house which used to close
the end of Blount Street just as the Centennial
School now closes Fayetteville Street. It was
standing ten years ago, and was used for a
while after the war for a girls' school.

The old State Bank where Colonel Polk
presided is now used for the Rectory of
Christ Church and is the third brick building
which was erected in Raleigh, the first one be-
ing the old State House, the second Casso's
Hotel, now used for stores and some of the
State offices, at the corner of Morgan and Fay-
etteville, still sturdy and substantial. The
State Bank building was much laughed at,
in the early day, because it was considered
queer architecture. One can still trace the
newer bricks where the old Bank door was
built up on the New Berne Avenue side. "Two
porches, and a house between, like the ham
sandwich."

140 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Colonel Polk of those days was a tall stately
imposing figure, of old-fashioned formal man-
ner, and ceremonious dignity, but capable of
unbending genially on occasion. He was a
citizen for everyone to be proud of, the man
whom his neighbors honored and called upon
to welcome distinguished guests and be the
presiding genius of public meetings and toast-
master at banquets on state occasions. In
politics he was an old time Federalist, but in his
youth he had a boy friend, a neighbor in
Mecklenburg County whose name was An-
drew Jackson.

The halo which surrounded this venerable
Revolutionary figure grew brighter as time
went on and thinned the ranks of his fellow
soldiers and the story of their deeds became a
sort of legend. At his death he was probably
the last survivor of the Revolutionary officers
in all North Carolina.

Colonel Polk, like other gentlemen of his
time, was a convivial soul, as no one thought
harm of being; but he was no vulgar roysterer
and he took a firm stand against duelling,
then an accepted way of protecting ''honor"
and settling controversies. On one occasion

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 141

he wrote for publication a strong letter con-
demning the practice, and this had great
weight because it was from a man so well
known to be of distinguished courage. This
declaration was needed, as at least one duel
had been fought about that time by a Wake
County man.

Alfred Jones of White Plains was a party in
a duel about 1820, and was badly wounded.
He always declared that though he nearly
died of his wound, he considered the mental
anguish he suffered for a few seconds while
looking down his opponent's murderous pistol-
barrel was more grim and unforgetable than the
physical pain of the wound. He felt his honor
entirely less satisfied.

To return to Colonel Polk. He was one of
those who owned great tracts of land in Ten-
nessee, and was once making a trip into that
state on business connected with his property,
when he saw, leaning over a fence beside his
road, a man whom he at once recognized, and
whom he knew only too well. It was a Tory,
who had formerly lived neighbor to his father
in Mecklenburg, and who had taken an oppor-
tunity while the men of the family were away

142 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

in the army to wreck and plunder his father's
plantation. The Colonel, knowing him for
this deed and knowing that he had got off
scot free, handed his horse's rein to his com-
panion, and withoutone word, dismounted and
fell like an avalanche upon the astonished
man, giving him a horsewhipping that was en-
tirely consoling to the giver, as well as fully
satisfying to the recipient. State Treasurer
Haywood was the authority for this anecdote.

Another story tells of his showing the young
folk how to dance a minuet in the stately
fashion of the eighteenth century, Miss Betsy
Geddy of the statue-saving fame being his
vis-a-vis and dancing partner.

When his son Leonidas, just graduated from
West Point, insisted upon resigning from the
army to study for the Episcopal ministry,
Colonel Polk could neither understand nor be-
come resigned to it. It is said that he spoke
of it for some time with an oath whenever he
mentioned it.

Cousin to one President of the United
States, friend of another. Colonel Polk was
the man who chanced to put a bit of bread
into the mouth of a third. Jacob Johnson,

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 143

father of Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor
in the Presidency, was for many years porter
and factotum at the State Bank, under Col-
onel Polk, and afterward.

This man Johnson was absolutely unedu-
cated, but Governor Swain describes his quick
heroism in saving Mr. T. Henderson from
drowning in Hunter's pond, according to ac-
count by William Peace. It was at a picnic,
and the canoe overset and Henderson was un-
able to swim. Johnson lived in a small house
near Casso's Hotel. Miss Margaret Casso nam-
ed the future President Andrew Jackson, al-
though he afterward dropped the middle
name. A newspaper advertisement is still
in existence offering a reward for the return of
this Raleigh boy to his legal guardians, when
he ran away from his apprenticeship at about
twelve years of age.

Successor to Colonel Polk at the State Bank
was William Boylan, the first of the name.
He was editor of the Raleigh Minerva^ some-
time state printer, and he was also a rich
planter, dying worth a million dollars at the
time when millionaires were most unusual
and money was far more valuable. Mr Boy-

144 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Ian came originally from New Jersey, but had
kin In North Carolina. His portrait shows a
face of a very different character from the
others of that gallery. He looks, among those
great lawyers, like a sedate business man and
his qualities of mind were the prophecy of
coming times. Mr. Boylan was public-spirit-
ed and progressive. He first saw the possi-
bilities, and set the example of raising great
quantities of cotton on the uplands of Wake.
Whitney's cotton gin had made the growing
of cotton profitable because the gin could re-
move the seed from a thousand pounds of
cotton in a day, which labor previously had
to be done slowly and tediously by hand.
Also the invention of the power-driven loom
and spinning machinery made more cotton
necessary to keep the looms of the world at
work, and the development of the necessary
inventions had built up a mighty industry.
Mr. Boylan planted acres of cotton where
square rods had been the custom before. He
also became interested In transportation, and
a heavy investor in our first railroads. He
was at one time president of the Raleigh and
Gaston Railroad. Governor Swain says of
him that he was dignified and grave, and it

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 145

also is sure that he must have been charitable,
for he is responsible for the building of the
first county poor-house in Wake. Before
that the County poor were boarded out with
the lowest bidder at county expense; a hard
arrangement.

Doctor Kemp Battle, from whose centen-
nial address many details of this old time may
be gathered, tells a story of how Mr. Boylan
sent loads of wood around to the poor, caught
as they were without fuel in the time of the
wonderful "big snow of '57." He states that
one ''son of rest" keeping warm abed that cold-
est morning, humped up in his mound of bed-
ding to inquire whether Mr. Boylan "had had
that wood cut up to fit his fireplace before it
was loaded on the wagon .^"

Mr. Boylan lived in the Joel Lane house
which he had bought from Peter Brown.
But one undignified thing is told of him — that
is his part in the fight which he and Joseph
Gales, rival editors, fought about some politi-
cal question. In this Mr. Gales was worsted,
and brought suit for damages, which were
awarded to the sum of two hundred dollars,
which amount he donated to the Academy.

»l

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 147

The two worthy combatants were after-
ward reconciled and shook hands in token of
amity. Mr. Boylan died in 1859, his Hfe thus
spanning the whole time of industrial and
material growth before the war.

Peter Brown, Esquire, was a lawyer and a
bachelor. He came to Raleigh in the first
years of its existence, but in his old age he
wished to return to Scotland, or thought he
did; so he sold his property, including the
historic Joel Lane house as above, and went
back across the water. He had contracted
the Raleigh habit however, and matter of
fact as he appeared, he let sentiment take him
back to Scotland, and then bring him back
again to North Carolina, where he died after
all.

Peter Brown also took a turn at being presi-
dent of the State Bank. He knew something
of the Scotch ideas of banking, said to be the
best at that time. He was a lawyer of ability
as well as a financier, and was for some time
the only practicing attorney in Raleigh. His
oddity was great as his ability. Once he
found occasion to move his law office, and
when ready for business in the new quarters,

148 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

he hung out the following notice: ''Peter
Brown, Attorney at Law, has moved from
where he was, to where he now is; where he
may henceforth at all times be found." No
ambiguity in that!

Judge Seawell, nephew of Nathaniel Macon,
was one of the legal lights of the time. He
married a daughter of James Hinton, son of
Colonel John the first, and his descendants
live here still. He was a well-known lawyer
and citizen representing this county in the
Assembly several terms.

Moses Mordecai, the first of the family of
legal and other prominence, came to Raleigh
in time to buy a lot at the second city sale.
Only recently has the great square, with the
old mansion built far back upon it, been finally
divided into smaller lots. Mr. Mordecai's
first and second wives were sisters, Margaret
and Annie Lane, daughters of Joel Lane.
Many of their descendants are among us now.

One of the old time merchants was William
Peck, who did a banking and mercantile busi-
ness at the south-east corner of the Capitol
facing Wilmington Street. He was a hatter
by trade, a safe man and a good citizen. He

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 149

admired the new Capitol as It gradually rose
from foundation to dome and watched Its
progress day by day from his shop door, com-
plaining mightily when the grading up of the
square began, and because of the bank of earth
in front of him he could no longer see the
whole building In Its entirety. Like Judge
Cloud of State-wide fame, he disliked whist-
ling as a means of self-expression, and of course
all the small boys of Raleigh took care to
make a long, shrill, ear-piercing effort, just as
they rounded his corner on a dead run. A
story Is told of him, a legend which Is a sort of
classical myth of the days of private banks of
issue, and which Is printed in that old book,
''Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi,'^
a story which may be true, but Is at any rate
a good parable, and runs this way:

A Mississippi horse-trader wanted to buy
exchange on North Carolina, and bargained
for a draft on Mr. Peck's banking Institution.
His exchange cost him ten dollars a thousand.
Then the banker In Mississippi asked if his
customer would do him the favor of carrying
a small package with him to North Carolina
to be delivered to his ^'old friend. Peck."

150 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The trader easily consented to do this. On
arrival in Raleigh he presented his draft, and
Mr. Peck was most positive that he owed the
bank in Mississippi nothing, but would like
to look over his books and make sure.
As he turned to go, the trader handed the
package to Mr. Peck, with the message, and
when unsealed, it contained the North Caro-
lina bills necessary to offset the draft. The
trader had paid ten dollars a thousand for his
exchange, and then had taken the risk of
bringing his own money that long, dangerous
way besides. This is a good story to illustrate
the working of the banking methods in vogue
before railroads and national banks were in
existence.

Jokes are the most difficult things to trans-
plant out of the time that gives them being,
but there is an old joke which might be told
here, connected with Mr. Peck. It is a true
tale, well avouched this time. One night the
great beaver, twice natural size, which swung
over the door of his shop and was his sign,
disappeared unaccountably. Next morning
a student at the University appeared in chapel
with this hat balanced on his head and further

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 151

disguised with huge goggles and a long coat,
with a cane in hand. This brought down the
house and broke up prayers for that morning,
as it might well have done with several hun-
dred young scapegraces fairly pining for an ex-
cuse for a demonstration. The naughty boy
who stole the hatter's sign was named R. S.
Tucker, and, in partnership with his brother,
became a considerable merchant himself in
after days. The father, Ruffin Tucker, had
settled in Raleigh some years before this and
was by trade a printer. Descendants of
this man are among those successful in busi-
ness of the city.

Dr. McPheeters, who has already been men-
tioned as head of the Academy and as ''Town
Pastor," was a very interesting figure of old
Raleigh. He took his calling in dead earnest,
and ruled on week days and on Sundays con-
tinuously, so that the boy who played hooky
and went fishing on Sunday instead of to
church and Sunday School, was made to regret
his mistake when he reached day-school
Monday morning.

Once Dr. McPheeters was about to
visit the sins of his youth in this way upon the
future Bishop of Louisiana, and Lonnie Polk

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 153

broke away and ran for It. He was Instantly-
pursued, caught, and birched by the Doctor
who on that occasion laid down the law In an
axiom which is old but by no means obsolete.
*'No boy," said Dr. McPheeters, ''who Is
not old enough to behave properly when he
knows he has been fairly warned, is too old
to be whipped for misbehavior."

The Peace brothers were men of diligence and
probity, successful merchants. William left
a sum for the building of Peace Institute.
They were both bachelors, and their name
suited their character. One of the city streets
Is named after them.

Ihave mentioned Joseph Gales and his estab-
lishing the first newspaper, also his connection
by birth and association with the ferment of
new thought in the manufacturing districts of
middle England. After his printing office was
wrecked and he was driven to emigrate, he
came from Philadelphia to Raleigh. He was a
man of resources, bringing some capital with
him, and having the knowledge needful to
start a paper mill to supply his press.

His wife, Mrs Winifred Gales, was highly
educated and had ability. She wrote the

154 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

first novel that was ever written and printed
in North Carohna, although not many have
been produced since. We have never caught
the writer's itch; however, it may some day
come to us. She is "the first that ever burst"
into the '^silent sea" of North Carolina author-
ship. She died in 1839, her husband two
years later. They lie buried in the old City
Cemetery. Beside their graves are those of
two grown daughters lost a few years earlier,
victims to one of those recurring epidemics of
malaria that took toll of so many who did not
know that m.osquitoes and a prevailing souther-
ly wind over Hunter's pond on Walnut Creek
were the combined cause of so much chills and
fever in the town of Raleigh. The Gales have
still descendants living in Raleigh and claim-
ing the city as home.

David L. Swain lies buried in Oakwood
Cemetery, and he lived his formative years
here, although he was chiefly known by his
later work as President of the University of
North Carolina. As a young man he came to
Raleigh, and studied law with Chief Justice
Taylor, who married the only sister of Judge
Gaston.

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 155

Although born in Buncombe County, and
coming to Wake after he was a man grown,
Swain was near akin to the Lanes and other
famiHes connected with them; his mother be-
ing Caroline, sister of Joel Lane, and he being
the son by her second husband, named as
they say after the first, David Lowrie.

Not many educational advantages came to
this lad in the western wilds, and young Swain
had scanty schooling, and but four months of
university instruction, before he went to
Raleigh to study law. Every crumb of learn-
ing that came his way he seized and assimilated,
and every book which he laid his hands upon
he read, especially absorbing all obtainable
history. Though his early life was not so
sordid and pinched as that of Abraham Lin-
coln, yet his education and development bear
some likeness to that of Lincoln, because he
was like him, a rough diamond, and took
polish from all the friction of later life; and be-
cause his education was in progress all during
that later life.

When he had won his law license he return-
ed to Buncombe, and was immediately sent
to represent that county in the next Assembly.

156 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Here he attended to the important bill in-
troduced by him, for building the French
Broad Turnpike, leading west into Tennessee.
In 1829, he received an odd compliment, be-
ing elected Solicitor for the Edenton District
because factional fighting had become des-
perately bitter, and only a man from out-
side the district could be tolerated. Next he
was appointed Judge of the Superior Court,
and was chosen over Henry Seawell, of Ral-
eigh, a man of greater known distinction and
a most excellent lawyer. His judgeship was
but another step upward.

He was elected Governor of North Carolina
by the Legislature, as was the constitutional
provision at that time, and was re-elected for
two succeeding years. During his term as
Governor he represented Buncombe County
in the Constitutional Convention of 1836.
This Convention was to change the Con-
stitution of North Carolina in many details,
and among other matters to amend the laws
governing the representation of the different
sections of the State in the Assembly. Gover-
nor Swain was full of detailed information re-
garding the State's history and statistics, from
the earliest Colonial times, and he led the re-

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 157

form party which equalized differences
between the east and the west — matters
which had never been adjusted, and which had
stirred up strife between the sections ever
since the Revolution.

In this same year, Doctor Joseph Caldwell,
President of the University, died, and Gover-
nor Swain asked his friend Judge Nash
whether he could recommend him for appoint-
ment to the vacancy. Judge Nash thought,
naturally enough, of formal academic educa-
tion, and of the lack of such preparation which
Governor Swain's exclusively political life
must present. All that he would promise was
to consult Judge Cameron about the requests
The latter held a diiferent opinion. He de-
clared that Governor Swain had all nec-
essary requisites for the position except formal
scholarship; that he had always been able to
manage men, and should know well how to
manage boys, and that his education, while
not conventional, was far broader than might
be supposed.

At the next meeting of the Board of Trus-
tees Swain was elected President of the Uni-
versity and went to Chapel Hill to take up his

GIHNTS OF THOSE DAYS 159

real crowning life-work. Hence some humorist
has said that the State of North Carolina
had given him every office in her power, and
had at last sent him to college to get an edu-
cation. This was an unjust taunt to a man
so well self-taught, and whose cultivation was
a progressive process lasting all his life. He
himself was the Historical Society, and his
collections of documents were very complete
for that early time. The historian Bancroft
used his collections and consulted his knowl-
edge for the chapters in his History of the
United States which concern North Carolina.
Governor Swain's political strength had been
aided greatly by his unerring memory for
kinship, names and dates, and this gift also
helped him in his knowledge and management
of his boys. His legal power was founded on
his grasp of detail, and by this also he was
fitted to record the history of the State he
loved.

Papers in the University Magazine, by his
hand, and a few occasional addresses full of
dry humor, are all that he left as formal
writings of a historical nature, and these are
all too few; but they give a presentment of

160 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the life that then was, on the far side of that
bloody chasm which was to divide all our his-
tory in twain.

Like Judge Gaston, Governor Swain was a
Federalist in poHtics, and became later a
Whig. He married Eleanor White of Raleigh,
the daughter of William White, Secretary of
State, and a grand-daughter of Governor
Caswell. He died in 1868, some say of
grief over the wreck of his beloved University,
accomplished in the disheartening Recon-
struction days. In person he was a tall,
awkward man, one of those whose appearance
lends point to some humorous nick-name.
His students called Governor Swain ''Old
Bunk," referring to his native county.

It is only in Governor Swain's reminiscences
of Raleigh that we gather the traits of the
lesser folk, lesser only in not being conspicu-
ous as State officials. He mentions and char-
acterizes many, of whom v/e may mention
Mr. Casso, the Italian tavern keeper whose
descendants are many, Dugald McKeithan
who married a Lane, the cousin of the Gover-
nor, John Meares, James McKee, Benjamin
King, Captain, afterwards Sheriff Wyatt, the

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 161

first member of the Briggs family, the original
David Royster, cabinet-maker (this last was
in Raleigh by 1801), John Stewart who mar-
ried Miss Margaret Casso and is the ancestor
of the Binghams of Mebane, James Coman, a
Frenchman, the Smiths, substantial mer-
chants, whose heir. Miss Mary Smith, after-
wards Mrs. Morehead, left her money to the
University, Ruffin Tucker who has been men-
tioned, who worked for twenty-five dollars a
year and board during his first year in Raleigh.

John Rex, the tanner, will be mentioned
more fully later. One John S. Raboteau, a
French Huguenot, a saddler by trade, should
be named here, for his grand-daughter married
A. F. Page, and through her he is ancestor
of the great Ambassador to England, and his
brothers, builders of North Carolina. Sheriff
Page, recently dead, was of kin to these.

Also there was a Captain Wiatt who built
the houseon Hillsborough road where the High-
way Commission's great shops stand today,
and who was the Marshall of the Supreme
Court for many years. He came from Vir-
ginia, was a veteran of 1812, and built a
country home almost like the one of about the

162 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

same epoch belonging to General Calvin Jones,
his comrade in arms. Captain Wiatt had a
wayside well which was used by all the passers-
by. He was also celebrated for the kindness
of his heart and the great freedom of his com-
mand of bad language. He was one of those
who swore terribly, although this is all that
was ever said in his dispraise. His home has
been very long a landmark of the county.

CHAPTER VII
More Biographies

N a previous chapter we sketched
Colonel William Polk, the Rev-
olutionary hero who was so much
the leading citizen of Raleigh
for so many years, and for the
completion of the story of our best example
of character transmitted from father to son
and built up in the Raleigh of old time, we
shall add a life of his son, Leonidas, who be-
came the celebrated Bishop-Brigadier of the
Confederate Army.

We are not able to claim possession of
that great ''Revolutionary Titan," as Gov-
ernor Swain calls John Marshall, who rode
his circuit as United States Justice, and was
thus a regular visitor to Raleigh, riding alone
from Richmond all those dreary miles in his
gig. The trip took him a week. We may re-
tell, however, the stories still remembered of
him, of his simplicity, his kindly good nature,
of how he loved to pitch horseshoes with the
townsfolk, of afternoons when court had ad-

[163]

164 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

journed; of how once he could get no tailor
to make him a pair of new breeches, for love
nor money, because he would not ask him to
take away the turn already promised to a custo-
mer to serve himself. As Justice Marshall
would not insist upon any special consideration
he had at that time to hold court in ragged
breeches, which made no more difference
than he thought it did, namely, no difference
at all.

Swain says, "I shall never see nor
hear his like again," and Judge Badger tells
of Marshall's saying in his hearing, ''The
Constitution of the United States is to be con-
strued not loosely, not strictly, but honestly."
Here you see Judge Badger learning those
lessons of moderation and of justice which he
put to good use for himself in his later life.

State Treasurers are usually retained for
many successive years; Secretaries of State for
long terms, also being re-elected and passing
their lives with us and becoming permanent
residents. The Judges of the Supreme Court
of North Carolina did not do this so invariably,
while Governors, having short terms of office,
were more often but transient sojourners. Men

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 165

from other states often came to us. The
mention of such solid and worthy qualities as
those of Duncan Cameron and Kenneth Ray-
ner, might be made as examples of the great
gain which often came to this city and state
when such men chose to cast in their lot among
us.

It is said that you must have been a part of
the city of Charleston for three generations
before you can claim to belong to the place.
Raleigh has been more hospitable from the
first, and has added to herself many a good
and worthy man by this virtue.

Certainly Judge Gaston should be charac-
terized in any story of Wake County. His
memory deserves honor among us for what he
was enabled to accomplish for Raleigh as
well as for his great service to the State.

He was born in New Berne, and when living
in Raleigh inhabited a little office building in
the yard of that house which stood, until a
few years ago, at the south-west corner of
Salisbury and West Hargett Streets. This
was originally the home of Chief Justice Tay-
lor, who married Judge Gaston's sister. The
little office in question was on the very corner,

166 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

and stood in an old fashioned garden, under a
huge ginkgo tree, and with vines and flowers
about its rear. Business houses have en-
croached on this old residence, and brick and
mortar entirely cover its site today.

Judge Gaston has no living relatives in the
State. His portraits, both painted and chisel-
ed in marble, are to be seen in the State
Library building. That he was a very great
lawyer those who know affirm enthusiastic-
ally; that he was a greater man, a white-souled
Galahad of his day, his contemporaries agree
in testifying, while his letters bear it out.
"His Sanctity" as one reverent admirer calls
him. Judge Gaston's pictured face is intel-
lectual, calm, regular in feature, but shows a
sad expression of the mouth, a somewhat
pathetic air. Gaston is said to have been a
bit too fine-grained for the rough game of
politics. He could not hate any one with his
whole heart for a moment, not even one of
another party! His high standards and per-
sonal ideals joined with his judicial temper-
ament, made some things unbearable to him
which would scarce have provoked a shrug
from a less sensitive man. When the Feder-
alist Party went to pieces he felt a little home-

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 167

less politically, and registers his disappoint-
ment in his advice to Governor Swain never
to be persuaded to re-enter public life after
he had found useful retirement away from it.

Judge Gaston was first a Congressman, re-
tiring to practice law but going to the State
Senate from time to time. In 1833 he was
appointed to the Supreme Court after the
death of Judge Leonard Henderson.

In religion he was a Catholic, and used his
influence in the Constitutional Convention of
1835 to do away with the restraints on re-
ligious liberty and amend the Constitution to
read "Christian," instead of 'Trotestant,"
when enumerating the qualifications for public
oflice. His speeches on that theme are said
to have carried his hearers deep into the realm
of abstract justice, leaving mere expediency
far behind.

In this connection let it be stated that in the
Constitutional Convention of 1861 the last
religious limitation was removed, when dis-
abilities were removed from the Jews, by
ordinance introduced by William Johnston
of Mecklenburg, father to Mrs. A. B. Andrews,
whose memorial volume this is intended to
become.

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 169

Judge Gaston's celebrated eloquence, like
that of many another dead orator, is hard to
estimate at this time. His speeches are
dignified, sensible, patterned with metaphors
like the figures on an old-fashioned brocade,
and like it a bit stiff. Voice and intonation
are gone. Great oratory is a fading flower.
Gaston's signal service to us and to Raleigh
was his determining influence in persuading
the Legislature to retain the Capital of the
State on the old site. In doing this he kept
our heritage for us which might have been
lost but for him. He was the author of the
words of our State song, ''Carolina, Carolina,
Heaven's blessings attend her!" He was also
permitted in that heated time to speak many
wise words about slavery, to prophesy its
downfall, and all this without offense, such
was the universal respect for his purity and
sincerity. His taking off was very sudden.
His last words were a confession of faith in
God and Christianity.

We have mentioned the name of John Hay-
wood, State Treasurer for forty years, builder
of the venerable mansion which stands un-
changed on New Berne Avenue and shelters
his descendants. He came to Raleigh in the

170 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

year 1787, and about that same time three
brothers of his also settled here: Henry, father
of Senator William H. Haywood, Sherwood
Haywood, and Stephen Haywood. By prom-
inence of position and by services the Treas-
urer was the best known of the four. His
portrait shows a handsome, well marked face
with dark eyes and a smiling expression,
crowned with a mass of prematurely grey hair.
He was an able man, but his greatest talent
was the art of doing kind things kindly.
He was a veritable genius at friendship.

Besides the duties of his ofBce, he interested
himself in the infant University, and he is said
to have missed not more than two trustees'
meetings in his whole career, a signal devotion
when we consider the long muddy miles that
had to be wallowed through on horseback for
nearly a whole day, both going and coming, to
the winter meetings. It is a persistent tradi-
tion that he was the designer of the seal and
motto of the University. This has not been
established, but it is given for its intrinsic like-
lihood.

He was responsible for calling to Raleigh
that good and useful man Dr. William
McPheeters who was a native of Virginia, and

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 171

who became both schoolmaster and town
pastor and was long a kind of Presbyterian
Pope of Raleigh.

Each session of the Legislature, Mr. Hay-
wood invited each member to eat at least one
meal with him, and he knew more men well
and pleasantly than did any other man
in the State unless it may have been Gov-
ernor Swain.

His funeral was a state affair, with full mili-
tary honors, and though Mr. Haywood was
an Episcopalian in denomination, his old
friend Dr. McPheeters pronounced the
funeral discourse, closing with these words:
"Integrity and innocence were his guardian
angels, and out of the furnace of suspicion
he came unhurt." Haywood County, where
Waynesville is situated, was named for our
longest incumbent in the Treasurer's office.

Judge Badger was one of the ablest men
ever produced in North Carolina. He was
born in the eastern part of the State, and was
a precocious genius, graduating from Yale
University very young. By the time he was
thirty years old, he had been a lawyer, a con-
gressman, and a judge, and had left the bench
to practice law in Raleigh.

172 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

William Peace, the merchant, told of having
sold him a suit of black broadcloth on credit,
when he was just twenty years old and had,
at that early age, obtained his law license.
It was against his custom, he said, but he was
so taken with the gallant youth, that he risked
the money upon him without security, and
was entirely justified in doing so.

Judge Badger had still a long and a brilliant
career before him after he settled in Raleigh.
When the Whig party rose out of the ruins of
the Federalist, after the disputes with Jackson,
Badger was appointed Secretary of the Navy
under Harrison. When Tyler, after succeed-
ing to the presidential chair on Harrison's
death, split the party. Badger resigned his
portfolio along with the rest of the cabinet.
Soon after this he succeeded William H. Hay-
wood as Senator, serving until 1855. Always
a man of great brilliancy of mind he took hold
of nothing by the rough handle. It was a
criticism of him that he was too jocular, that
he could make a joke of anything and laugh it
out of court. He held well-defined opinions,
however, and was a moderate man, a concilia-
tor. In his opinions about slavery he follow-
ed the ideas and the hopes of Henry Clay.

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 173

In denomination he was Episcopalian, and
was an active opponent of Bishop Ives, who
was touched with a wave of that same belief
which was troubling the Church of England at
that time, and which carried Newman over
into the Catholic Church. That was also
the final development with Bishop Ives, and
Badger early recognized whither this Roman-
izing tendency was drifting, and opposed and
exposed the change in the conventions of the
Episcopal Church.

A staunch Union man, a moderate and a
conservative. Judge Badger was nevertheless
forced by the cruel turn of affairs in '61 to
move the secession ordinance, as representing
Wake County, in May of that year. He died
in '66. His second wife was a sister of Leoni-
das Polk, and his third wife was a Haywood.

Like the Polks and like the Haywoods, the
Battles have given good men and faithful ones
to Raleigh. Judge Battle, father of Doctor
Kemp Battle, so long President of the Univer-
sity and historian of it, father also of our late
useful townsman Richard Battle, Esquire, lived
for most of his active years in Raleigh. Dun-
can Cameron moved here in 1829 and was

174 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

chairman of the committee which had charge
of the building of the second Capitol; he also
had charge of the building of Christ Church,
thus leaving his mark on Raleigh in these
lovely buildings. He was also president of the
the State Bank until succeeded later by his
son-in-law, George Mordecai.

Leonidas Polk, the second son of Colonel
William Polk, was born in Raleigh. In a
former chapter he has been characterized as
a live boy, a student at the old Academy un-
der Dr. McPheeters. His distinctive ac-
complishment as a youth was his gift of song.
He could sing more old songs better than any-
one else in town.

When prepared he went early to Chapel
Hill, remaining two years. A part of that
time Governor Swain was his room-mate.
In 1822 he received his appointment to West
Point.

Up to this time in his life he was a high-
spirited and care-free but ambitious lad, hav-
ing perhaps a keener pair of eyes in his head
than most, and indeed he was scarcely more
than twenty when he entered the Military
Academy.

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 175

There he encountered an atmosphere as de-
void of any religious warmth as an institution
could manifest without being absolutely
atheistic or openly vicious in its influence.
It is not known to the average person what a
tendency to irreligion was shown in our
country during the early part of the last cen-
tury, before the great revivals began to sweep
their converts into the churches, and before
a true missionary spirit became active. The
older folk of that time were of the generation
of the French Revolution, and the most
educated minds, like Jefferson's for example,
were full of the ideas of Voltaire or of Tom
Paine, and were often agnostic in refusing to
fix any religious belief.

At West Point at that time it was consider-
ed soft and silly to notice the subject of religion
in any way. Not a single officer there was a
professor of any religious faith at that time,
although they had a chaplain for form's sake.
About that time a new chaplain was appoint-
ed and came to serve them. He records how
chilling he found the apathy and the veiled
scorn he met, but he was the kind of man
whose conviction led him to strive to accom-
plish something under any conditions. He

v^vl

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 177

was able to influence Leonidas Polk, and made
in him his first convert. The young man was
deeply and genuinely touched and changed.
Alter graduating at West Point, he told his
father of his new outlook and of his recently
taken decision to leave the army and study for
the Church. While Colonel Polk's plans for
his boy were cruelly frustrated, still there was
no open breach between them, and the father
became more reconciled as time passed.
After studying at the seminary in Alexander,
Virginia, Leonidas was ordained deacon in
1831.

Before that time he had married Miss
Devereux, daughter of John Devereux of
Raleigh, and when a few years later he was
consecrated Missionary Bishop of the South-
west, he moved to Tennessee to the generous
tract his father allotted him of a thousand
acres of good blue grass.

The diocese of the new bishop was enormous
consisting of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
Arkansas, Indian Territory of Oklahoma, and
the great state of Texas. The whole of this
wide extent of country was still sparsely set-
tled, and its isolated inhabitants had very
little religious instruction and did not wish

178 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

for any. In emigrating, they had escaped re-
straint, and unlike the more northern emi-
grants they were mostly country people and
did not come from communities well organized
religiously. Their old homes had often been
as isolated to all intents and purposes as the
new ones so far on the frontier.

This made the problem of the missionary,
and on one of his long journeys a Texan told
Bishop Polk that he was wasting his time.
''Go home; go home, young man," said this
man earnestly, "we are not worth saving!"

An anecdote told of one of these border
ruffians of this decade will illustrate the lawless
undisciplined spirit of the South-west with
which Bishop Polk had to deal in the begin-
ning of his ministry. It was a man who had
been jailed for manslaughter and was most
indignant, considering it an outrage, and say-
ing, "Now-a-days you can't put an inch or so
of knife into a fellow, or lam him over the
head with a stick of wood, but every little
lackey must poke his nose in, and law, law,
law is the word. Then after the witnesses
swear to their pack o'lies, and the lawyers get
their jaw in, that old cuss that sets up there

MORE BIOGRAPHIES 179

high and grinds out the law to 'em, he must
have his how-de-do! I tell you T won't stay
in no such a country. I mean to go to Texas,
where a man can have some peace and not be
interfered with in his private concerns!"

This was the spirit that Bishop Polk met
over and over again in his long journeys all
over this great district. His life was threat-
ened with violence in more than one frontier
place, but he was a man who could not be
daunted; and beside this he well understood
the tempers and manners of his southern fel-
low-countrymen. He did the work of an
evangelist with much success. Later he help-
ed to initiate and organize the University of
the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.

The war came on in '61, and Jefferson
Davis, President of the Confederacy, being in
need of all the trained soldiers possible to
lead and train his armies, asked his advisers
if they supposed Bishop Polk would allow
himself to be appointed Major-General. This
appointment was offered to him, without his
having any surmise of it beforehand. After
some consideration. Bishop Polk accepted the
commission, and served his country and chos-
en cause as Major, afterwards Brigadier-Gen-

180 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

eral all through the war. Quite late In the
struggle he was killed during the fighting
round Atlanta. He was burled in Augusta,
Georgia.

His men called him Bishop more often than
they called him General, and he was much
loved. He kept his sacred calling well to the
fore, while doing the difficult duty of a soldier
and officer in command.

Such a sincere picturesque figure as he
makes is a worthy subject for study and inter-
est. We cannot claim many such distin-
guished and unusual persons.

Many soldiers went out from Raleigh and of
these many distinguished themselves. Their
histories are part of that great book of golden
deeds which should be read as long as books
are made. But it would be too long to try to
tell of them all; to tell of those who came
home alive to work out a restoration of the
piteous destruction of war, and of those who
were mercifully spared the further sacrifice
except the one of their lives given in a moment
of time, rather than spent painfully day by
day. These things will be better told by
others. There is not room here for that long
roll of heroic names.

CHAPTER VIII
Improvements and Progress

OMETIMES improvement Is de-
finitely started by the stimula-
tion of a great loss. The Raleigh
that we know today only began
to come into existence after the

old town had been destroyed by a series of

fires.

Of these the most serious and the most
spectacular was the burning of the old State
House in 1831. From Governor Swain's ac-
count, given as an eye-witness, we can recall the
despair and dismay of this loss.

The fire occurred in broad daylight, the
middle of a summer day, June 21st, 1831,
and caught from a solder pot which a careless
workman took into the loft where he was re-
pairing something about the roof, and there
left it, while he went to dinner. During his
absence the fire caught and spread unnoticed.

Once before, in 1799, there had been an
alarm about fire, a warning given by Andrew
Jackson, conveyed to his old friend and for-

[i8i]

182 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

mer neighbor Colonel Polk, to the effect that
it was conspired to destroy the State House in
that way. It seems that the Secretary of
State, Glasgow, holding his office as a respect-
ed leader and a Revolutionary officer of re-
pute, had somehow fallen into bad ways, and
was issuing fraudulent land warrants. The
deception being found out, he was prosecuted,
and to prevent conviction he had designed to
burn the State House, and with it all evidences
of his crime. This plot Jackson discovered,
and the State House and its records were
saved, while Glasgow fled from justice.

This time, however, the fire was well under
way before anyone knew about it, and when
the flames appeared they were at the top of
the building, and there was not even a ladder
at hand long enough to reach the trouble.
And so that bright June day, the State House
burned leisurely, the black smoke rolled up
into the blue sky while the owls and bats and
flying squirrels scurried out of the burning
dome in panic, and the terrified people of
Raleigh ran helplessly to and fro across the
Capitol Square. Mr Hill, Secretary of State,
had ample time to save the State papers. A

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 183

few that were lost at that time were after-
wards restored by bequest of Waightstlll
Avery, from his private collections.

Miss Betsy Geddy, that spirited and gritty
maiden lady, rallied all comers to try and
move the Canova statue of Washington
from beneath the burning roof. The citizens
took hold, under her leadership and encour-
agement, and tried hard, but the marble was
very heavy, and there were not hands enough
to lift or to move it. There remained noth-
ing to do but to watch it burn. By and by
the fire had surrounded it, and it could be
seen heated red-hot, glowing like a figure in a
fiery furnace. So it shone for a time with
unearthly beauty, and suddenly the roof fell
in upon it and it broke and crumbled in utter
and final ruin. A silence fell on the watching
throng, and some little child's voice was heard
speaking the sorrow of all: 'Toor State House,
poor statue, Fm so sorry!"

After the smoking ruins in the Capitol
Square had been quenched in a few summer
rains, the question was asked and the dis-
cussion began whether the edifice should or
should not be rebuilt in the same spot or an-
other Capital city selected.

184 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

At the next General Assembly the contro-
versy became hot. Fayetteville, always sore
because she had been passed by that first
time, when the new Capital was located in
a wilderness, came to the front again to put
forth an earnest efforttohave her way this time.
She felt that the breeze that fanned the
flame had been blowing good to her door.

A proposed town site of Haywood to be
built at the junction of the Cape Fear and the
Deep Rivers was spoken of also; and much was
said in its favor because the idea was that
water was needed for transportation, and such
a site would be favorable for a Capital city
on that account. This last is a persistent
tradition, and not a matter of written record.

Haywood in the House, Judge Henry Sea-
well in the Senate, made the motion to rebuild
the Capitol on the former site in the City of
Raleigh, and the great influence and eloquence
of Judge Gaston were needed at this moment-
ous session of the Assembly so to sway the
wavering minds of the Legislators that they
might vote for the retention of the seat of
government in Wake County. The bill to
rebuild the Capitol at Raleigh and on its old

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 185

site was finally passed by a safe majority,
and carried the appropriation of fifty thousand
dollars. The Representatives, thinking of
the twenty thousand which sufficed to build
the first State House, considered this a gener-
ous allowance. They ordered the new build-
ing to be as nearly fire-proof as possible, to
be built of granite and to have stone floors as
well as walls.

The committee to have charge of the build-
ing were William Boylan, Duncan Cameron,
William S. M'Hoon (State Treasurer), Henry
Seawell, and Romulus M. Saunders. This
first committee soon resigned and was suc-
ceeded by a second entire body composed of
S. F. Patterson, Beverly Daniel, Charles Man-
ly, Alfred Jones of White Plains, and Charles
L. Hinton. Mr. Nichols was State architect
and had had some experience with the stone
which could be quarried here at home. A
builder from the North was associated with
him for a little time, but was later dismissed.

The committee were men of boldness, for
they calmly used the whole of the first appro-
ation to build the foundation for the new
Capitol and then asked for more. Of course

Canova's conception of George Washington as pictured

IN A RARE SKETCH AFTER THE FAMOUS STATUE. (fROM
MRS. JULIA JOHNSTON ANDREWs' SKETCH)

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 187

this was exactly what they should have done,
but when we reflect how unpopular this action
would appear to the habitual parsimony of
that day's public opinion, and how well the
Legislature understood that unavoidable tax-
ation was all that would be tolerated, we may
understand that in doing this they were tempt-
ing criticism and doing it consciously.

On July 4th, 1833, the corner stone of the
Capitol was laid with Masonic rites, and an
account of the procession and of the articles
placed in the corner stone may be read in the
papers of that date.

Governor Swain was in office at that
time, a;id on that same day was held in the
brick hotel, formerly the State Museum, a
meeting of representative citizens of North
Carolina to debate on ways and means for
building a railroad; or two lines, one east and
west and one north and south, connecting
with the Portsmouth Railroad, and extending
to some convenient point on the South Caro-
lina line. Governor Swain presided over the
meeting, the first of its kind ever held in
North Carolina, and their decision was to
petition the Legislature to assist the enter-
prise by pledging the faith of the State. A

188 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

subsequent, more widely representative con-
vention suggested the proportion of three-
fifths subscribed by stockholders, and two-
fifths loaned or invested by the State.

To return to the new Capitol, begun as
above, in 1833, and built for the sum as cal-
culated after its completion, of 2530,684, re-
quiring seven years to finish. It is, and has
been, as fine a building of its kind as is to
be found in the United States, and it
it has been a lovely and satisfying sight to
several generations of North Carolina folk.
The stone was all taken from that same quarry
at the eastern side of town which had been
opened for the foundation of the first State
House.

It is a granite, rather brittle, and veined
with lines of brown which make its coloring
warm instead of too grey. It is somewhat
translucent, having the quality, more than any
other stone in the State, of reflecting a differ-
ent color under every changing sky which
looks down upon it. When snow is on the
ground, in the glow of a winter sunset, it has
a lovely bluish cast. In spring, when the
baby leaves on the trees around it show pale
green, it looks pinkish and pale grey, and

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 189

ethereal like a fairy palace. This wonderful
stone gave trouble to the builders, however,
and sometimes cracked unexpectedly. One of
the great pillars of the western facade, has a
broken corner in its pedestal, where a piece
of the slab faulted when the weight grew heavy
upon it, and which was never corrected be-
cause of the great expense involved of renew-
ing the whole pillar.

Directing the building was William Nichols.
The architect, Ithiel Towneof New York City,
came to see the foundation laid out and begun.
He left as an architect and draughtsman to
to represent him, David Paton, a Scotchman,
who did not remain long in North Carolina
after he had completed his work. During his
stay, however, he married a North Carolina
lady, and his wife died and left him with one
baby girl. This child was returned to the
care of her Southern grandmother, and mar-
ried here. Through her Mr. Paton has descen-
dants in this State.

Thomas Bragg, father of Governor Bragg,
was also In charge of part of the work. It
was necessary also to Import skilled stone-
cutters from England and Scotland, for there

190 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

were none In North Carolina, and accordingly
the ancestor of the Stronach family was one of
these skilled craftsmen, William Murdoch of
Salisbury was another, also aMr. Puttick, and
others who cast in their lot here afterward
and became permanent citizens.

On first coming to this climate these foreign
folk found the heat and humidity hard to bear
and several died of the fevers which were con-
sidered quite Inevitable in those days. They
lie buried in the old City Cemetery. The most
of the Scotch masons adapted themselves as
that sturdy race does in every part of the
world, and worked busily at the rising wall
of the Capitol until it stood complete.

There is no use giving dimensions and telling
of the source of the architectural details of
this building, speculating as to the Greek
or Roman temple suggested by this cornice,
or the classical building imitated in that fa-
cade, for we may see the lovely pile of stone
any day, those of us who live in this city and
country. It has become for us like the sunshine
and the blue sky, too much a part of our
daily vision for us to realize the great Intrin-
sic beauty it represents.

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 191

It took several sets of commissioners to
finally complete the building of the Capitol,
and they frequently resigned, and were often
replaced during the interval; for it is hinted
that the great amount of money which had to
be expended more than the first appropriation
caused a good deal of criticism. Also not being
skilled architects they must stand by what was
told them by their contractors; and many
difiiculties quite unexpected had to be met
one by one in the progress of the edifice.
Besides this, every one who passed by felt
privileged to criticise and spend an opinion,
until those in charge could scarcely maintain
their calmness. This sort of free advice is
one of the rights of a democracy. Kings'
houses are not so pitilessly criticised.

The last committee, those who persisted,
were but three— William McPheeters, John
Beckwith, and Weston Gales, and it is these
whose final accounting to the General Assem-
bly is published in the newspapers of the time.

The stone to build the Capitol was hauled
to the spot by means of a little street rail-
road or tramway, called the ''Experimental
Railroad." This was constructed across from

192 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the quarry to the eastern end of New Berne
Avenue, and west along that street to the
Capitol Square, and the small cars drawn by
mules easily handled the blocks of stone.
This plan, which seems quite simple and ob-
vious, was considered a wonder and a great
innovation at that time. The railroad Idea
was quite new and as thrilling to the popular
imagination as the airplane Is now In 1922.
The idea of building and operating this little
railroad was due to Mrs. Sarah Hawkins Polk,
wife of Colonel William Polk, and she put
her savings into It, realizing three hundred
per cent.

Among the letters of her son, Leonidas, then
a cadet at West Point, to his parents, was one
which contributed the Idea. He went to
Boston on a summer leave of absence, and
saw there In operation that sort of a tramway
bringing in the stone being then used to build
Bunker Hill Monument. He took the trouble
to write his parents the whole plan in detail,
making a careful little sketch to show the
proper flange the car wheels should have In
order to run safely on the wooden rails.
This experimental railroad was such a sue-

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 193

cess that a passenger car was put on, drawn
by a safe horse, and people came from far and
near to enjoy a new sensation, so that at times
the hauling of stone was somewhat Impeded.
Street cars were thus a very early develop-
ment In Raleigh, due to the seizing of a new
Idea by a woman.

Indeed, the good ladles of Raleigh seem to
have been more ''experimental" than their
lords on several occasions, although we are of-
ten told that women are the conservative sex.
We have told of Miss Betsy Geddy's spirited
effort to save the finest thing In the State, the
Canova statue of George Washington, at the
time the old State House burned. This story
is like that of the alabaster box of precious
ointment, always to be told In her praise.
One of the daughters of Mr. Casso, the inn-
keeper or hotel man, had married the mer-
chant, John Stewart. She was one of those
strong-willed and practical sisters who make
the finest ancestors In the world, because they
have the common sense and decision to meet
a crisis.

She saved her home, although it was given
up to be destroyed in the path of that great

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IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 195

fire that swept off the whole east side of
Fayetteville Street. This happened shortly
after the State House was burned and shows
how nearly Raleigh was totally annihilated
by recurring conflagrations. They brought
gunpowder, and told Mrs. Stewart that her
house must be blown up to arrest the fire,
which was come almost to that place. She
mounted her roof and defied them to blow
her up with the doomed house, and when she
had thus gained her point she proceeded to
save her house, and keep a roof over her head,
by hard work and wet bed-quilts. Another
time she saved somebody's store from being
a total loss by quenching the burning roof with
twelve barrels of vinegar, after the wells were
all drawn dry. At the festival in honor of
the coming of the railroad into Raleigh, she
served the banquet to seven hundred people
who sat down simultaneously.

Good fire protection was scarcely to be ex-
pected in Raleigh, and the business block was
crowded together more than was prudent
when the town was so small. A tiny fire
engine was bought as early as 1802, and
another in 1810, although they seem not to
have done much good.

196 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Also there were at one time primitive water-
works, water being pumped up from Walnut
Creek to a tank and allowed to run down
Fayetteville Street by gravity. The wooden
pipes soon filled up with sediment, for the
water was uniiltered and full of the red mud
which is seldom absent from running streams in
this section. Drought then reigned as be-
fore, except as slaked by well-water.

Hunter's Pond was the cause of much of the
fever and chills that made the city sickly, and
only after the fever epidemics of the thirties
was this pond bought by the city and drained.

Raleigh by this time was becoming aware of
her backwardness. Railroading was the topic
and the sensation. Internal improvement
was in the air. After so long without taking
serious interest in the subject, people had sud-
denly become impatient of the endless miles
which separated them from their next town
neighbors. Every newspaper told of the rise
of real estate values, the increase in the
promptness of the mails, and the other joys of
those sections where railroads had already be-
gun to be built and operated. ''Let us cease
to doubt, to hesitate and slumber, let us tear
away the poppy from our brows, let us no

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 197

longer be the Rip Van Winkle among com-
monwealths," thus runs the editorial comment
upon the following bit of news item, dated
February Sth, 1833, Petersburg, Virginia.

"It is impossible to convey to those who
have not witnessed a similar scene, an ade-
quate conception of the pride and pleasure
that beamed from every countenance when
the Engine was first seen descending the plain,
wending her way with sylph-like beauty into
the bosom of the town, and, like a conqueror
of old, bearing upon her bosom the evidence
of the victory of art over the obstructions of
nature."

Conventions were held, stock books were
opened and the successive Legislatures mem-
orialized, while, after a year or two of such
excitement many railroads had been laid out on
paper and nowhere else, and the newspapers
thought things were wofully slow moving.
Yet when we think of the novelty of the un-
dertaking, we cannot say that there was much
delay.

The beginning of railroad agitation and the
laying of the corner stone of the new Capitol
were accomplished the same day, and the rail-

198 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

road, the Raleigh and Gaston, was near
enough to completion to be celebrated at the
same time as the finishing of the Capitol
building.

The same year 1840, which saw the new
Capitol complete from foundation to
dome, also saw the first train roll into Raleigh
from Gaston, near Weldon, and the feelings so
well expressed in Petersburg, of victory over
space and time, enlivened the hearts of this
city, rejuvenated as it was by these two great
tasks accomplished.

The Three Days of Raleigh were June tenth,
eleventh, and twelfth, 1840, and the town gave
itself up to jollification, speechification, il-
lumination and barbecue. Guests from Rich-
mond and from Petersburg, from Wilmington
and from other North Carolina towns, were
present. Wilmington had also seen her first
train pull into the station that same spring,
but the western towns were still served by
stage-coaches.

The banquet was served in the new freight
depot, empty and spacious, and capable of
holding the seven hundred guests. A first
shipment of cotton for export had been brought
into it just the April previous.

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 199

There were five tables ninety feet long, and
the banqueters toasted in real, sure-enough
liquor, The Railroad, The Capitol, Judge Gas-
ton, "The Ladies" several times, and Mrs.
Sarah Polk especially, and separately, al-
though they called her a "Distinguished Fe-
male." To read of the doings, one would fear
that the banqueters might need help when
time came to go home after all was over.

That night and the following there were
strings of colored lanterns from tree to tree
in the Capitol Square, and transparencies, one
showing the new Capitol, one the new engine,
"The Tornado," and the third, a "lovely
scene of nature" entitled "Our Country."
There were two balls on successive nights in
the Senate Chamber, whose great chandelier
held a hundred wax candles; and concerts in
the Commons Hall for those who did not
dance.

During the day there were trips a few miles
out on the railroad, and return, although the
rails, or iron strips on which the wheels should
run were not yet nailed to the wooden string-
ers. ''The Tornado," as the first engine was
nam.ed,hadbut a single driving wheel on each

IMPROVEAIENTS AND PROGRESS 201

side, and no cab. It was made In Richmond
and was similar in pattern to a good many
engines turned out about that time. The cars
on these first roads were Hke a string of stages
at first, but in South Carolina they had evolved
a box-like passenger car, like a low-built street
car. Hence we suppose the first North Caro-
lina passenger cars might have been similar to
those used near Charleston. All engines had
proper names for the first twenty-five years
of railroad experience. An item in a Raleigh
paper about this time tells of a great railroad
spectacle in Baltimore, when the engine came
in on the Baltimore and Ohio, drawing seven
coaches full of people at once, thirty persons
to the coach.

The strips of iron which shod the wooden
rails would sometimics become loosened, catch
against a car wheel, and turn upwards pierc-
ing the car, so that by this means the train
would be stopped. They were called snake
heads. No one is mentioned as having been
impaled by this strip of iron, although there
must have been danger of this accident.

The fuel burned on our first railroads, and
many years thereafter, was wood. The pro-

202 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

gress of the trains was uncertain. Sometimes
the engine would lurch off the track, and go
plowing through the bank a few feet, but it
was not a wrecking train and a great derrick
that replaced the derailed cars, but simply a
couple of dozen men gathered from nearby
farms, and a mule or two, for the little engine
was not too heavy to be coaxed back upon
the track by their combined efforts.

Railroad nomenclature was not settled at
this time. They called a collision (and these
happened soon) a concussion. A train was
called a brigade of cars.

The Raleigh and Gaston was eighty-six
miles long, and this distance and return was
made in twelve hours, which was considered
a giddy pace. The time table given occurs
several years later, and says "Leave Raleigh at
7:00 a. m.. Reach Weldon at 12 m."

The president of the new road was George
W. Mordecai. The State aided in financing
the project, although a little reluctantly, and
on rather severe terms. We must notice that
fares on the different stage lines were reduced
immediately, and stages and harness began
to be advertised for sale. That the much

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 203

needed impulse to prosperity was given, farm
property increased in value along the new line,
and the North Carolina Railroad was soon
built, shows that upon the coming of the much
needed improvement trade was steadily pro-
gressing. For a long time the population of
North Carolina had been almost stationary,
and from 1830 to 1840 only fourteen thousand
five hundred increase was noted over the
whole State. Now the "breath of progress
and the breeze of prosperity was to blow away
all stagnation and sloth."

CHAPTER IX
The Middle Years

N the decades of the forties and
the fifties progress and develop-
ment of Wake County went stead-
ily forward, even as the prosper-
ity of North Carolina increased.
The young men of the Commonwealth did not
run away in such numbers to Texas and Mis-
souri as they had formerly done to the near
South and West.

The City of Raleigh, established beyond all
peradventure as Capital of the State for the
future, found herself by central position, and
by heritage, confirmed in the social leadership
of the State. Her individual social atmos-
phere began to make itself felt. Then, as at
present, there existed a certain indifference to
money as an asset socially, a desire to value
her new-comers for what they could prove
themselves to be, provided that first of all they
be agreeable people. This is the quality of a
society conservative, and yet liberal; reserved,
and yet tending to kindliness and toleration.
Such a flavor of life, fine and subtile, does not

f204l

THE MIDDLE YEARS 205

develop save in a time of quiet improvement,
and hopefulness.

In the county as a whole, the change to more
prosperous times became evident. There was
more to employ the young men of a family and
to make their stay at home worth while to
them.

Probably most of these plantation homes,
with their wide double piazzas and clustering
groves of trees, these patriarchal mansions,
only a few of which survive conflagration and
neglect, were built about 1840.

Some were built later, a few much earher,
but none could have been made after the war.
The woodwork and the cornices of these
houses were often of a high finish, and the
joinery surprises those who think that slaves
could attain no fine workmanship. Those
were the houses of which the old folk would
fondly remark, '1 tell you that was a fine old
house in its day." These homes seem quite
simple and plain, but are well remembered for
what they represented to the life of those
times. They are roomy, they have a look
about them of generosity on the part of their
builders, of the spirit of free hospitality un-

206 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

trammeled by the drudgery which lack of ser-
vants must bring. They were largely placed
in a country not too thickly settled, and pro-
vided with the abundance of food and drink
which was unstinted at that era of our history.
They gave a cheerful welcome and were abodes
of gracious leisure. These recollections com-
bine to fill up the kindly memories of these old
houses. Indeed the time from the first of the
forties through the fifties must have been a
golden age to be alive in, the joyous youth of
our country.

Improvements in living conditions came in
quick succession, and made existence easier,
while anticipation of the next surprise kept
attention and imagination at a stretch to be-
hold the next wonder that should happen.
The over-mechanical development of things
which has made our hurry and complication
too great was unguessed at that time, and
only the delight of growing ease was perceived.

The conquering of space by the railroad, and
of time by the telegraph; the increase in wealth
and comfort; in the desire for learning and
spread of education; the feeling of enlarged op-
portunity, as the great United States rounded
out to its present boundaries; all these ele-

THE MIDDLE YEARS 207

ments combined to give everyone a forward-
looking cheerful expectation.

The Mexican War, resulting as It did in
complete victory, gave the self-confidence of
success to our soldiers. The pioneer spirit
which in America had so long driven its child-
ren further west to find the "Something hid
behind the ranges" let only the Pacific Ocean
arrest its onward career. Gold was discover-
ed in California, and the mad rush to the West
went across the plains In '49. How romantic
it all was! Life was a joyous adventure to be
met with enthusiasm, to be followed with
eager delight.

When reading of the political campaign of
1839-40 in which the Whigs elected Harrison
President, It seems a performance boyish and
boisterous beyond any that has been carried
on before or since. The songs, set to familiar
tunes; the log-cabins mounted on wheels and
drawn about to represent the home of "Old
Tippecanoe" as they called General Harrison;
the barrels of hard cider kept continually on
tap for his supporters, said to be his favorite
drink; the ships In honor of Van Buren (no
especial drink specified); the slang-whanging

208 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

by all newspapers; the processioning and the
yelling; it all sounds like a prolonged college
celebration. The Raleigh Whigs built a log
cabin for campaign headquarters, which was
twenty-five by forty feet in dimensions. The
young Whigs cut the logs in the woods, hauled
them in, and built it in one day. Here was
the place for the Whig speakings. The Marks
Creek Whigs, and others from that side of the
county, came in in procession, bringing bar-
rels of hard cider with them. They joined in
a whole day's rally, finished up with a big bar-
becue. The whole State went wild. A log
cabin came rolling through the country all the
way from Salisbury to Raleigh, with doings
every step of the way. It was a merry time,
but although all this boisterous party spirit was
afoot, yet there were many other things more
permanently worth while to be considered.

An interest in education, as mentioned
before, had sprung up with renewed prosper-
ity. Almost at the very beginning the far-
sighted fathers had established a State Univer-
sity, but there were as yet no public schools as
we now have them. These were days of the
Academy and the private school. There were
many of these all over the State, both for boys

THE MIDDLE YEARS 209

and girls, and also we had had a good many
more or less successful and permanent In Wake
County. Saint Mary's school in Raleigh was
at first a boys' school. It was opened in 1834
but was soon changed to what it has remain-
ed. Pleasant Grove Academy at Wake Forest
was another girls' school of this county.
Wake Forest College was founded by the
Baptist denomination, and located on the
plantation of Dr. Calvin Jones in the year
1833. The first president was that consecrat-
ed man. Dr. Waitt.

This was the first denominational college
In North Carolina, and has been of untold
benefit to the whole State. It was founded
under the idea that it should be an Industrial
school, and this Idea was also used at the be-
ginning of Davidson College a few years later.
Trinity College also was founded in these
next few years, but to Wake Forest belongs
the honor of being the first In the field. The
industrial idea was soon abandoned.

In the year 1840 was enacted the act which
made available the scant school funds of the
State which had been accumulating for years,
and those counties which were willing to sup-

THE MIDDLE YEARS 211

plement their quota of State money could
establish free schools. Wake was one of these
counties, although not many free schools were
opened as yet, and those taught only the most
elementary branchesof reading and writing and
a little arithmetic. Nevertheless, every child of
Raleigh should be taught why one of our school
buildings is called the "Murphy" and one
the 'Wiley" school.

Other Ideas of reform were abroad in
Raleigh. There was begun at that time the
first temperance society, and though this died
out afterwards, the Idea lived on to later
fruition.

In the year 1841 the population of Wake
County was eighteen thousand, and by the
year 1860 It had increased to thirty thousand.

After the railroads were completed, Raleigh
might seem to settle to quiet growth because
the new era had begun in earnest with the
coming of the railroad, and all sorts of new
comforts and luxuries hitherto uncommon had
come in with transportation. To read the
grocers' advertisements, comparing them with
a few years before, you may notice how they
change from a simple list of heavy groceries

212 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

and no more, to long columns advertising
dainties such as candies, raisins, figs, cordials
and syrups, dried fruits, teas and coffees,
enough to make the mouth water.

Milliners, too, began to advertise styles
straight from Paris, and trimmed bonnets
from New York, these last of the coal-scuttle
variety, huge and deep, to be worn with
dresses which spread and frilled at the bottom
like a two-yard-wide morning-glory blossom.
The ladies wore tight bodices and large leg-o-
mutton sleeves made to stand out by means of
cushions at the shoulders.

To match such ladies' dresses, the beaux
wore tight blue tailcoats with brass buttons
and high velvet collars, nankeen trousers with
straps under the foot to hold them down
(these were tan colored, lighter than khaki)
and high bell-crowned beavers, light colored,
and made with wide curly brims. Their
cravats were like young tablecloths, winding
twice round the neck, holding up the sharp
points of their white collars against their ears.
Ladies' hoop skirts grew wide or grew narrow
according to the fashion, the men's trousers
grew more open or narrowed at the foot, year

THE MIDDLE YEARS 213

by year, but all through the period I am de-
scribing, clothing was exaggerated and extrav-
agant, and many yards of material went to
the making of a single costume.

Soon after the coming of the railroad, we see
a soda fountain advertised, and soon again, a
circus with a menagerie. More amusements
were demanded, more luxuries obtainable.

The telegraph was not a common conven-
ience until about 18SS, and was not used to
run trains by, at first. You did not know
what had become of your family after the
train had carried them away until at least a week
after when they wrote you their adventures.
You simply had to sit patiently and wait
for the train you expected to take, until it
finally rolled in around the curve, to the sta-
tion.

But indefinite though the schedules were,
goods and people could be moved from place
to place as never before. A farm.er could dis-
pose of his produce to better advantage,
could sell his cotton and tobacco at the sea-
board. Agriculture, which had become less
efficient rather than more so during the first
third of the nineteenth century, picked up in

214 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

interest as its rewards became greater. The
articles in the papers treated of good methods,
and the first agricultural fair was held in
Raleigh in 1833. News items about large
crop yields were common, and in 1841 the
amount of one hundred ninety bushels of corn
to the acre is given as the best record of the
two Carolinas.

That other kind of cultivation which is
spelled Culture with a big C, and which must
be neglected for awhile until a new country
has time for it, began in this era to be more
sought after. Good books are advertised for
sale in each issue of the Raleigh papers. A
Richmond gentleman, visiting Raleigh for the
railroad celebration, describes his morning
spent in the North Carolina book store, and
tells of the interesting literature he found there.
About this time, sandwiched in among law,
religion, text books and almanacs, we find ad-
vertised, DeTocqueville's Travels in America^
Scott's Novels, and Jane Austen's "Emma'\
besides much other good literature.

The Southern Literary Messenger was start-
ed in Richmond as early as 1831, and was one
of the very first American periodicals devoted

THE MIDDLE YEARS 215

to pure literature. On the list of original sub-
scribers which made its publication possible
occur the names of several Raleigh people.

After 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, according to
many good critics our greatest American poet,
was the editor of this magazine, and to it he
contributed some of his loveliest lyrics. Books
and magazines of the best were plentiful as
you see in old Raleigh, and all the means of
self-culture were available here which were to
be found anywhere in the United States.

But all through these times of expanding
horizon and days of dawning culture, there
was an undercurrent of discord, a voice of
coming storm. It could be heard, so to ex-
press it, only when silence fell; like the sound
of surf, inland on a still night.

The North and South had been for thirty
years like members of a family whose individ-
uals have had a terrible disagreement on fun-
damentals, but which has decided, for reasons
of policy and property, to hold together in
outward semblance long after all true fellow-
ship and mutual love have departed. The
subjects which divided them, slavery and
states rights, were past being discussed as a
general theme of common interest.

I

5 H

U O

•=r o

THE AlIDDLE YEARS 217

Feeling on both sides had run so high in
Congress that full statement of opinion either
way was difficult to tolerate. Compromise
after compromise had been arranged by first
one and then the other party, each side had
been soothed in turn; but by the latter years
of the decades we are describing, further ar-
rangement of differences in this way had be-
come a stench in the nostrils of either side.
One thing only had been accomplished by this
continual compromising, namely, time had
been given so that the nation had learned
more about workable self-government.

Now the time of silent ignoring of the topics
which everyone was passionately thinking
about in their hearts was nearly past. The
calling of things peaceful when all inner con-
viction was a bitter partizanship had to find a
definite end.

North Carolina had been a somewhat back-
ward state, she had been subject to certain
conditions which had made her so. Her in-
tense independent individualism had made it
hard for her to unite her sons in any cause,
and the Union had not been so much a matter
of course to her as a lesson to be learned, a
course to be thoughtfully adopted.

218 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

In Raleigh, as the fifties died, thoughtful
men sat and watched all their commonwealth
building toward a great Union, crumble day
by day. While no one would admit that it
was in any danger, all were aware of the fact
in their secret hearts, and knew that any
moment might set the whole country adrift
as in the swift water above Niagara, and that
the falls were near.

Young heads might wish a change, might
wish to cast the die, to pass the Rubicon; they
might tell of what they did not wish to be
forced to advocate; but although North Caro-
lina had been late in entering the Union, yet
she felt bitterly sorry to leave it.

Meanwhile the young men found the cau-
tious counsels of their elders very slow and
cool. Their blood was up. They had no ex-
perience of war; but neither had they any
doubt of their own valor.

Our good Governor Ellis, truly honest,
much tried, and earnestly trying to avert
trouble, and those wise heads which stood
with him, held back against the current with
all their influence, but the young men had got
the taste of that exultation which coming

THE MIDDLE YEARS 219

Storm gives to their leaping pulses. Speech-
making might satisfy the elder folk, but they
were for launching out. Issues grew ever
more tense. Different opinions became al-
ways more irreconcilable.

In the spring of 1861, the plot of ground
where the Tucker Building now stands on
Fayetteville Street was the place where the
rival factions rioted. Sumpter had been fired
upon, but still there were those who hoped
that peace would be restored. Red cockades
were mounted by those anxious for secession,
and a flag representing that idea was raised,
but Union men fired upon it and tore it
down. One of the younger Haywoods (Dun-
can) and Basil Manly, returned the fire of
those who would remove it, and as the riot
went on Governor Ellis came to quell the ex-
citement. At that very moment, it is said,
the telegram was handed him announcing
Lincoln's call for troops from North Carolina.
Then it was that North Carolina seceded.

Like all calamities, the War of 1861 came
suddenly, and was greeted with painful dis-
may by those who had been fondly hoping
against all hope for the preservation of the
Union.

220 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Some of the people of this old town were
very sorry, some were quite exultant and gay,
but all knew where they must stand. The hot
secession boys and the men who had hoped
and held to the Union all enlisted together;
together they drilled and trained, and together
they fought, and side by side some of them
died, on Tennessee hills, and in Virginia Valleys.

There is nothing that changes the air, that
finishes an era, that closes a partition, like a
war. Thus ended the times of youthful exu-
berance, and the tender grace of that vanished
day is a fast fading memory to a few old
people, survivors of a time which the young
must reconstruct to their minds painfully by
means of documents and histories.

Many years ago, an old friend of the writer
lay dying of a lingering disease. She said to
me, then a very young girl, ''I shall be glad to
go; I have seen so much trouble, I am so tired
of life." I wondered at her feeling; I knew
her husband, a good man; she had many loving
children, and I said so to her. She only look-
ed at me with that pitying expression which
the older folk use when some young person
philosophizes about the life which is just fairly

THE MIDDLE YEARS 221

beginning for them. '^Yes, Honey, all that,
but you must remember that I lived through
the War, and you young folk have no idea
what that means."

Those who know by full experience are now
very few. It is now that the histories are
being written. Careful minds are at work on
many a painstaking, earnest book, by which
those who came after may reconstruct the
long causes and the swift developments of that
time of civil conflict.

From Raleigh there went away, with the
Boys in Grey, that old, happy, care-free time,
and though many good times have come since,
that especial "before the war" breezy atmos-
phere is past and gone.

Reading the newspapers of the time, one is
impressed by the lack of hysteria, the clear ac-
ceptance of consequences, after the plunge had
taken place. When, after the first enthusi-
asm was over, the grim realities of war were
more and more felt, and strong feeling had
to be constantly controlled, it was wonderful
how cheerfully, to outward seeming, the people
could go about their daily tasks.

Before the war was over, heroic exultation
had to give place to something distressfully

n

o

THE MIDDLE YEARS 223

calm and stoic. Bereavement and economic
privation were two things bravely endured,
but the painful story of them is almost too sad
to recall even today.

When we look over the sea, and remember
the things which have been endured, and are
still to endure so long after the actual fighting
has come to an end and the killing has stopped,
we may see plainly how many ills are harder
to pass through than sudden death.

A little book, written while the pain of those
times was fresh, Mrs. Spencer's Last Ninety
Days of the War, is a most vivid picture of the
mind that suffered in those days. It is a nar-
rative, not a special pleading. To read the
book at a sitting is to feel the swell and throb
of the personal anxiety, pity and sorrow rise
and fall, to sense the privation, suspense,
heartbreak and disconsolate apathy, which
arise out of too much anguish. It hurts a
heart which loves the land and the people too
much to be easy reading even so long after all
is over.

Perhaps this is the reason that it has been
complained of the City of Raleigh, that doing
as much as she did do for her soldiers in this

224 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

last great Armageddon, yet she never could
accomplish the feat of cheering her boys as
they marched away. We stood stonily and
tried to smile, but we never cheered; we knew,
for our fathers had told us.

The Capitol has looked on many scenes of
joy and grave import. The sky has arched
over the tender shadings of its walls for many
an April. The young leaves were as fresh and
fair in the spring of sixty-five as they were last
year. After the last junior recruit had march-
ed away, there came a calm ominous time
when the spring sunshine fell on a hushed
town. People were uneasy, and stayed at
home. Old men and boys were the only ones
at home with the women. Streets were de-
serted, homes neglected, and the stores on
Fayetteville Street were closed.

A suspense brooded on the city, for some-
thing strange and sinister must be about to
happen. Johnston's army had gone west,
leaving the city undefended. Over the Fay-
etteville road they said Sherman was coming.
Straining ears of the watching ones listened
for the first beat of martial music. Let us
quote Governor Swain for the rest:

THE MIDDLE YEARS 225

"It was my lot, on the morning of April 13th,
1865, as a friend and representative of Gover-
nor Vance, to find on approaching the south
front of the Capitol, the doors and windows
closed, and a deeper, more dreadful silence
shrouding the city than during the sad catas-
trophe (the burning of the old State House) to
to which I have referred.

"I met at the south front of the Capitol,
however, a negro servant who waited on the
Executive Department, the only human being
who had dared to venture beyond his doors.
He delivered me the keys, and assisted me in
opening the doors and windows of the Execu-
tive Office, and I took my station at the en-
trance with a safe conduct from General Sher-
man in my mind, prepared to surrender the
Capital at the demand of his approaching
forces. At that moment, a band of marauders,
stragglers from Wheeler's retiring cavalry, dis-
mounted at the head of Fayetteville Street,
and began to sack the stores directly contig-
uous to, and south of Dr. Haywood's residence.

I apprised them immediately that Sherman's
army was just at hand, that any show of re-
sistance might result in the destruction of the

226 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

city, and urged them to follow their retreating
comrades.

"A citizen, the first I had seen beyond his
threshold that morning, came up at the mo-
ment and added his remonstrances to mine,
but all in vain, until I perceived and an-
nounced that the head of Kilpatrick's column
was in sight. In a moment, every member
of the band with the exception of their
chivalric leader, was in the saddle, and had
his horse spurred to the utmost speed. He
drew his bridle rein, halted in the center of the
street, and discharged his revolver until his
stock of ammunition was expended, in the
direction, but not within carrying distance of
his foe; when he too fled, but attempted to run
the gauntlet in vain. His life was forfeited in
a very brief interval.

"The remains of this bold man rest in the
cemetery, covered with garlands and bewept
by beautiful maidens, little aware how nearly
the city may have been on the verge of devasta-
tion, and how narrowly the fairest of their num-
ber mxay have escaped insult and death from
the rash act of lawless warfare. . . . About
three o'clock in the afternoon, in company with

THE MIDDLE YEARS 227

Governor Graham, who had risked Hfe and
reputation In behalf of this community to an
extent of which those who derived the advan-
tage are Httle aware, I dehvered the keys of the
State House to General Sherman at the guber-
natorial mansion, then his headquarters, and
received his assurance that the Capitol and
city should be respected and the rights of
property duly regarded."

CHAPTER X

Our Benefactors

AKE COUNTY has owned enough
righteous men to have saved
many a Sodom. Beginning to
count those who have Hved their
Hves worthily before all, the list
is a very long one. Singling out from their
number those whose gifts have been material,
as well as examples in the fine art of living
well, we find five citizens whose hearts have
been very generotis to their fellow men. A
society which has brought forth so many
hearts bent on service is a society which is
fulfilling its best objects, a thing of prime
value.

In this summary only those whose benefits
were first and especially to the people at large
are given. Many donations to causes de-
nominational and causes educational have
been made by different ones among us, but we
must here notice the more general response to
the needs of our city.

Besides these men, there is a woman, and
she not a native or resident, who must have

[228]

OUR BENEFACTORS 229

her meed of praise for the good work she began
here.

John Rex, the tanner, belongs to the very
earHest period of Raleigh's existence. He
came here from Pennsylvania, about the
time of the first sale of lots, a quiet sort of man,
simple in his dress and plain in his ways. He
is said to have resembled John Quincy Adams
remarkably in face. He lived to a good old
age here, was never married, and left all his
money to found a hospital in the city of
Raleigh.

By his will his negroes were freed, and his
property allowed to increase until there should
be sufficient money to build a hospital large
enough for city and county. Besides this he
bought a large number of city lots at the
second sale in 1814 or 'IS, which he directed
not to be sold until the estate should be set-
tled, and the hospital building provided. He
hoped and intended that the value of these
would suffice to produce a maintenance fund.
The securities which made up the estate
proper were much diminished or practically
wiped out by the War, and only the lots re-
mained, but Mr. Rex's speculation in these did

230 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

not fulfil his desire. The part of the city where
the smaller, poorer homes were being built ex-
tended that way, and this did not permit of the
good prices he hoped to realize. The Rex
Hospital, therefore, has not equalled the inten-
tion of its founder, in that instead of being
a well supported institution from the first, it
has been struggling constantly for adequate
funds. If intentions, however, count for any-
thing, those which gave us the hospital were
as broad and as generous and as full of con-
structive philanthropy as anything which has
been done. We have a hospital, and it bears
the name of John Rex. His bequest was the
nucleus. In 1840, that wonderful year, the
committee to administer the Rex estate was
duly named, thus beginning another good
work, and Judge Battle appropriately enough
was made head of the enterprise which was so
aided and fostered by his son, Richard Battle,
in its later working out.

WilHam Peace, the merchant, left a large
bequest toward the education of women, and
Peace Institute today bears the name of its
founder.

At the time of the War the building was in-
complete, and was used in its unfinished state

OUR BENEFACTORS 231

for a military hospital. Since the War it has
been an excellent school, maintained by the
Presbyterians, and many a fine woman has
had her educational opportunities there. Not
so old as Saint Mary's, it is somewhat a sister
institution, a school, not a college. The funds
which were to have made it independent were
lost in the war-time depreciation of values.
As in the case of Rex Hospital, it is the thought
that remains.

A woman's name is associated with the
State Hospital for the insane. This stands
on a hill to the south-west of Raleigh, which
is always spoken of as Dix Hill, although I
think the name is a popular, and not a formal
tribute, to the good woman who procured the
building of the asylum.

Dorothea Dix was a Massachusetts woman,
one of those maiden ladies who feel the callto
mother the world. Her name stands beside and
not at all beneath the names of Florence Night-
ingale, Clara Barton and Elizabeth Fry. She
was mistress of a small independent fortune,
and had no ties to hold her in one place, so she
could follow her desire of a traveUng life in the
interest of her chosen cause.

232 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

She began investigating the condition of the
insane in all parts of the United States, later in
Canada, and finally all over Europe.

First it was her custom to make a tour of the
State she wished to influence, taking volumin-
ous notes of every poorhouse or prison where
insane or paupers were kept. This she did
quietly and unobtrusively in the guise of a
private person. She made her long journeys
alone and fearlessly, and records that she
never met with any incivility in her whole
work. In the year 1847 she traveled all over
North Carolina, and the facts she gathered
there she wrote into a memorial to the Legis-
lative Assembly of 1848, presenting it in per-
son, making a stay in Raleigh for the purpose.
She was told by those to whom she applied
that nothing whatever was to be done. It
was pleaded that the people would never per-
mit the necessary taxes to be levied. The
Democrats, then in power, had been overcome
by such a spasm of economy that they even
voted to leave unlighted the lamps which hung
in the portico of the Capitol while the Legisla-
ture was in session.

The leading Whigs, feeling thus relieved of
all responsibility, said that they could do no-

OUR BENEFACTORS 233

thing for a new and expensive scheme like the
building of an insane asylum with such penu-
rious opponents in the saddle, and so the mat-
ter was at a deadlock.

Dorothea Dix always kept a diary of her
efforts, and in it she writes of her campaign in
North Carolina. "This morning after break-
fast several gentlemen called, all Whigs.
They talked of the hospital and said the most
discouraging things possible. I sent then for
several of the leading Democrats. I brought
out my memorial, and said, ^Gentlemen, here
is the document I have prepared for your
Assembly. I desire you, Sir, to present it'
(handing it to a Democrat said to be most
popular with his party), and 'you gentlemen,'
said I to the whole astonished delegation, 'you, I
expect to sustain the motion of this gentleman
when he makes one to print the same.' " The
legislator who took the memorial from the
hands of Miss Dix was Mr. Ellis of Rowan,
who afterward became the Governor of North
Carolina.

The first result was that the bill establish-
ing an asylum for the insane was not passed;
but Miss Dix had led many a forlorn hope, and

234 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

she did not know what the word failure meant.
Staying at the same hotel with her were Hon-
orable James Dobbin, afterwards Secretary of
the Navy, and his wife. Airs Dobbin was
taken very ill, and Miss Dix, having made
friends with her earlier, came and nursed her
so tenderly in her illness that when she felt
death near, from her dying bed she remember-
ed to ask her husband, as her last request, to
champion the cause Miss Dix had at heart.
This was the only way she could show her
gratitude for the devotion Miss Dix had lav-
ished upon her.

Mr. Dobbin went from his wife's funeral to
the Assembly, and plead so eloquently and
feelingly, his eyes wet with tears, with such
great effect, that the bill passed its final read-
ing with one hundred one "ayes," and only ten
'^nays." Miss Dix left Raleigh the next Decem-
ber, as she said, ''perfectly happy," and the
State Hospital for the Insane, which she would
not allow to be named for her, is one of twenty
established in the United States by her efforts.
She was reverenced as a saint, and loved as a
benefactress by the whole countiy, and especi-
ally was this true in the South, as it is said.

OUR BENEFACTORS 235

Dorothea Dix is the only one of our benefact-
ors who did not spend her days among us, but
on a subsequent visit she selected the site for
the Hospital. She lived to extreme old age,
dying in the year 1880.

Stanhope PuUen has not been so long dead
but that many of us have known him well by
sight, and have greeted him daily in the street.
Except as he expressed his opinion in action,
his thought was always a sealed book. An
excellent but a taciturn man, as to his own
affairs.

He was born on a farm near Neuse Station
in Wake County in 1832. His mother was
EUzabeth Smith, sister of the two Smith
brothers, substantial mxerchants of Raleigh.
When his aunt, Mrs Richard Smith, was left a
widow she employed Mr. Pullen to manage
her estate, and when she died without child-
ren she made him her heir. He also managed
the estate of his cousin, Mary Smith Morehead,
which was left as a bequest to the University
of North Carolina. He was a most able busi-
ness man and everything which passed through
his hands seemed to prosper.

After the war, when everything was utterly
depleted, and the start toward prosperity

Our monument to the Soldiers of the Confederacy, with
THE Olivia Raney Library in the background

OUR BENEFACTORS 237

seemed so difficult, Mr. Pullen used his ready
cash in purchasing property in Raleigh, and
in this way acquired the Rayner, formerly the
Polk property, and he extended Blount Street,
by moving the old Polk mansion round to face
Blount Street instead of closing it.

Thus was opened the best residence section
of Raleigh during the eighties. He dealt
most liberally with the city, in giving all the
streets, grading and graveling them free.
Later he opened a large tract to the North
of the town at first popularly called 'Tullen-
town," and sold this off in lots for cheaper
homes.

In keeping his own counsel so thoroughly,
Mr. Pullen never had it said of him, ''Mr.
Pullen will do this" or "that." He seldom
spoke out his intentions. His mind took
knowledge of opportunities, and he made
money out of his ventures, but he never gave
himself the least uneasiness over the result of
his deaHngs, never bargained or dickered as to
the values he set on his property. He offered
his land at what he beHeved to be a fair price,
and never apparently cared whether the buyer
took the bargain offered or not. That his

238 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

prices were fair is shown by the immense
amount of property which passed through
his hands at one time or another. One year
he bought quantities of cotton on speculation,
and a friend asked him whether the fluctua-
tions of the market did not cause him un-
easiness. He repHed that he had never lost
an hour's sleep over business in his life. He
gave to the city the land that is now Pullen
Park, and moreover, laid it out, and planted
it with the innumerable trees which are there
today, growing while he sleeps.

The land adjoining, occupied by the build-
ings of the North Carolina State College, is
also a gift from Mr. Pullen to the State, and
when the first building was completed, and
the workmen were clearing away the lime bar-
rels and brick-bats preparatory to the open-
ing of the new college, Mr. Pullen appeared
with his negro helper, Washington Ligon,
and mule and plow, and laid ofl^ the drives
and paths about the campus with his own
hand, and further superintended the plant-
ing of the cedars, the magnolias, and the
willow oaks which he loved best, and which
loved to grow for him.

OUR BENEFACTORS 239

He personally looked after the repairs on
the many homes he rented and all great or
small repairs were done as needed, but he re-
fused to be hounded about improvements.
It was no use for a good tenant to take the
high tone about repair, for he would be quiet-
ly and simply told that he might move out at
once if conditions were disagreeable to him.

At the same time Mr. Pullen was well-
known as the kindest and most liberal of land-
lords. In his continual rounds, he came to
know certainly who was in want, and who was
worthy of help. He disHked to be asked for
charity, but the loads of wood, the supplies of
groceries that came to many a struggling
widow, or poor man with sickness in his fam-
ily, unsolicited and unacknowledged, are
known only to the recording angel. Thanks
he never permitted.

When Edenton Street Methodist Church
was being built, he came and supervised the
construction day by day, and saw all go right,
but no one dared to ask, "How much are we
to depend on you for, in paying for the new
church .f"' After everybody had given all they
could, and then stretched it a little further,

240 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Mr. Pullen placed a check in the collection
plate which made him the largest contributor
to the building fund.

The State College was so beholden to him
for its site, that they once sent an ambassador
to him to ask for his portrait for their halls.
One of the trustees was commissioned, and
made an eloquent plea for this reasonable re-
quest. Mr. Pullen listened with his quizzical
little glance and a lift of his eyebrow, and after
the speech was quite finished, he answered
very pleasantly, 'Well, they'll never get it;
Good-morning." Hence there is no portrait
of Mr. Pullen extant.

Mr. Pullen never married, and lived during
the latter years of his life with his niece, Mrs.
Lizzie Pullen Belvin, wife of Charles Belvin.
He went and came on the street cars, and was
always most pleasant to the neighbors riding
down town with him; but the next time they
passed him on the street he would forget to
answer their greeting. Everyone knowing
him would say, "That is only Mr. PuUen's
way," and greet him gladly the next time he
felt free to notice his friends. These manifest
oddities only made him more interesting, while

OUR BENEFACTORS 241

no one has ever done more for Raleigh, or allow-
ed less credit to be given to him for his gener-
osity. Pullen Park bears his name, one won-
ders by what oversight of the giver. He was
a great believer in technical training and in
the higher education for women. He also
gave the site of the State College for Women
at Greensboro. He died quite old, on June
25th, 1895.

John T. Pullen was the nephew of Stanhope
Pullen, and as a young man was often the al-
moner of his uncle. Both these men were
truly charitable, but while Stanhope Pullen
was lonely with the reserve of a man who is
independent of others, his nephew was the
heart friend of everyone who needed a friend.
It was said of him that he served God for a
living and ran a bank to pay expenses. The
Savings Bank that every child in Raleigh
called Uncle John Pullen's Bank, was well and
conservatively run, but his real business con-
sisted in his charities, in his furnishing forth
of a Christian ideal without a flaw, a life that
no one could call insincere or cavil at — that
no one could ridicule as narrow, or condemn as
fanatic.

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OUR BENEFACTORS 243

Everybody knew and loved him. Children
followed him. Men who were not working
much at Christianity might criticise others,
but they could not say, and never did say,
that John Pullen was not a good man.

The poor were his adorers. He was most
at home with them because he could do them
the most good. If there was a religious meet-
ing in any church he was there; he built and
largely maintained a church of his own, which
was really of the Baptist denomination, but
which was called John Pullen's church as if it
was of some especial faith that carried it fur-
ther than mere denomination could do.

John Pullen's most precious benefits to the
place of his birth were spiritual. He was the
standard of goodness for Raleigh. True, he
gave largely to charities during his life; he
gave always and widely to the poor, generous-
ly to his church, in many little ways to child-
ren whom he always loved; to a tired old
colored woman a coin in passing with the re-
quest that she ride home on the street car; to
a wild and rowdy drummer an inappropriate
Bible, which was accepted shamefacedly, and
which brought the young man to his knees

244 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

after many days. He gave himself, every day
and all the year. As a young man his san-
guine and sympathetic temperament, not yet
sanctified, brought him into trouble. He was
a bit dissipated, but he left all that early
behind, except as the memory of it helped
him to speak to the wrong-doer understand-
ingly. Mr. Pullen lived his later life with
his niece, Mrs. Kate Belvin Harden, wife of
John Harden.

When he died in 1913, the city arose as one
man to show how much he was beloved. The
factories closed, the school children came, the
Governor and state officials as well, together
with the rich and poor, while all churches
united to honor his memory. The city
whistles were silenced for the day he lay in
state, and several convicts came out unguarded
in their stripes from the Penitentiary, sent
by their fellows to lay a cross made of prison
blooms on his coffin, and returned to prison
sobbing for the loss of their friend. His
works do follow him.

Of the five men one remains to be mentioned.
The other four were all bachelors. The woman,
Miss Dix, although not one of our own people,

OUR BENEFACTORS 245

was assisted in gaining her benevolent desire
by a woman friend, so that the State Hospital
represents at one and the same time, awaken-
ed love for the unfortunate among our people,
zeal for humanity in Miss Dix, and the result
of a love which blossomed in loss, the fulfil-
ment of the dying request of Mrs. Dobbin
to her husband.

Another and the last of our benefactors to
this time, was Richard Beverly Raney. He
has given the city more wholesome recreation
and delight than anyone can know, and doing
this has also commemorated an ideal union, a
love story more beautiful than fiction. And
so the Olivia Raney Library also came out of
love and loss.

R. B. Raney was born in Granville County
in 1860. He had no chance for a college edu-
cation, although he was a man who would have
profited by one if it had been possible. He
had his living to earn. He became clerk at the
Yarborough Hotel under Doctor Blacknall's
management, being known to the latter as a
worthy boy, to whom he gave the position
out of friendship.

Mr. Raney made good, was promoted, and
finally became owner as well as manager of the

246 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Hotel. He was successful always, and be-
came agent also for the state for one of the
best Insurance companies.

He married Olivia Cowper, daughter of
Pulaski Cowper, and she died after only a year
and a half of married life.

Soon after, there was a movement begun to
start a city library by general subscription.
Mr. Raney heard of it, and modestly claimed
the privilege of giving the whole amount and
making the gift a memorial to his lost wife.
Accordingly the building was placed on one
of the very choice sites of Raleigh, facing the
Capitol, and was built, equipped, decorated
and furnished in every particular by him. Af-
ter the books, four thousand in number, were
catalogued, and everything was in readiness,
Mr. Raney had the library incorporated, and
conveyed it to a self-perpetuating board of
trustees, to be used as a free library for the
white people of Raleigh. This gift he made
in his prime, and before he became the com-
paratively wealthy man he was at his death.

During the rest of his years Mr. Raney
bought new books constantly for the library,
but he refused to dictate, or to take any

OUR BENEFACTORS 247

managing part in its affairs. He would be
only one among a number of its trustees.

He married a second time, and the home he
built for his second wife stands on the opposite
corner of Salisbury and Hillsboro Streets
across from the library building. He died in
1909, after his library had been a joy to the
town for nine years.

Mr Raney was always very averse to any
commendation, and would turn the subject
quickly if anyone alluded in his presence to
his generosity. He remains a very great bene-
factor to the city if reform is, as it is said to
be, a matter of substitution. What is the
great value of an institution which fills the
mind with innocent pleasure and leaves no
room for evil thoughts.^ What is it worth to
a young mind to reach out and find food and
interest which without the gift of books
would be lacking.^ If books are worth what
we know them to be worth, how shall we
thank the man who made the best literature
free to any person who will take it home and
read it.^

We are beneficiaries of an institution now so
much a part of the scheme of things in Raleigh

248 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

that if it were to be closed for a month, or even
for a week, the whole population would be up
in arms to reclaim the privilege which they
had not sufficiently appreciated because it
was so absolutely free.

CHAPTER XI

Distinguished Visitors

ANY people whose names are writ-
ten large in the books of fame
have visited Raleigh in course
of its existence. Washington
did not come this way in 1791
on his trip through the United States of his
day because the city was only as it were, a
place on paper. He went to older commun-
ities in North Carolina, both in the east and
in the west. His itinerary brought him as
near as Salem, which was his last stop as he
returned into Virginia after his Southern
journey.

Lafayette, however, when he returned to
America in his old age and went on a tour of
the land he had helped to free from oppression,
made a memorable visit to Raleigh. He trav-
eled in a carriage with a constantly changing
military escort, which accompanied him from
one of his stages or stopping places to the
next.

He entered Raleigh from Halifax, over the
Louisburg road, spent two days, and on the

[249]

250 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

third left the city for Fayetteville. This was
early in March of the year 1825. He brought
with hini as personal companions his son,
George Washington Lafayette, and a secretary.

Previous to his entry into Raleigh he spent
the night with Allen Rogers, grandfather of
Rowan Rogers, beyond Neuse River, on the
old Louisburg road, and was met several miles
from town by the Wake County Military
Company and by the Mecklenberg County
Cavalry, come from Charlotte for the pur-
pose, as well as by a good many citizens
on horseback, which made a most imposing
cavalcade.

Arriving in Raleigh, he was feasted and
praised and speechified over, just as Wake
County and Raleigh would delight to do in
honoring such a national friend. He was en-
tertained at the old Governor's Mansion at
the foot of Fayetteville Street. The first
State House was then in existence, and
beneath its dome stood the famous marble
Satue of Washington, which Lafayette con-
templated and praised for its likeness to his
beloved Commander of the old days. The
engraved picture of him so standing with a
lady beside him, said to represent Aliss Betsy

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 251

John Haywood, daughter of the State Treas-
urer, was made at the time, and a copy of this
is still an interesting relic of the Hall of History.
It was made from a painting executed by
Jacob Marling, a Raleigh artist, who also
painted the old State House.

Lafayette, grown old after his stormy life,was
a small, spare, quick-moving man, emotional
and impulsive in his ways, while our Revo-
lutionary hero. Colonel Polk, was a giant six
feet four inches in his stockings. Of course
the welcoming of the distinguished guest was
due to the surviving Revolutionary officer,
who had been his friend and former comrade
in arms, and who was at that time perhaps the
most distinguished citizen of Raleigh.

So it was Colonel Polk who, walking beside
Lafayette, entered the east portico of the State
House with him and, pausing, turned with him,
so that the people assembled might see the
adopted son of the Father of our Country.
Lafayette, whose heart was as warm and whose
emotions were as ready as they were when he
was a gallant boy, suddenly was overcome
with feeling, and turned and threw himself
upon the breast of his old friend, kissing him
on both cheeks with enthusiasm.

252 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

A shout of glee rose from the spectators who
had never before chanced to see grown men
kiss each other, and Colonel Polk, scarlet and
embarrassed, his Scotch-Irish reserve all up-
set, tried to pat back his emotional friend and
pull away from his embrace, while at the
same time he was unwilling either to hurt his
feelings or to jeopardise his own dignity.

Lafayette had forgotten his English very
largely, from disuse, and unfortunately had
become somewhat deaf. He had a few phrases
which did duty for many occasions. He
would say, ''This is a great country" and *'I
remember," without saying just what. He
would say to an admiring citizen by way of
conversation, "Are you married.^" If the
answer was in the affirmative he would
say, ''Happy man," if "No" he would rejoin,
"Lucky dog."

Now Colonel Polk informed General Lafay-
ette in his first conversation with him of the
death of his first wife, whom Lafayette re-
membered, the wife whom he lost before he
came to Raleigh to live. Lafayette did not
quite catch his remarks, and as w^as customary
answered, "Lucky Dog!"

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 253

To an American of today or yesterday,
Lafayette was the sign and symbol of some-
thing very precious, of a national romance of
history that stirs us to the marrow then and
now. His coming was a great honor; his per-
sonality was so kindly and so sincere as to fill
the heart with warm regard ; and when, in a few
years after his memorable visit his death oc-
curred and the slow-moving news came into
North Carolina, all the State newspapers were
put into mourning for him by broad black
lines between their columns, customary at
that time as showing respect to some great
public man or president at his passing.

Lafayette rode out of Raleigh to Fayette-
ville, whither he was accompanied by the
Mecklenburg Cavalry, and was given an
especial festival in the town named for him.

Our next great figure who came to visit us
was Henry Clay, the great Conciliator, and
it was at the time when he was Whig candi-
date for President. Notwithstanding this he
came, not as a partizan, as he announced, but
as the guest of the whole State, and as such
he showed forth his charming personality.
His visit took place in the summer of 1844,

254 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

and he stayed a week. He made himself
agreeable in his inimitable way, and is said to
have attended church on Sunday at Edenton
Street M. E. Church with the mother of Judge
Badger. The story of his Raleigh letter has
been told elsewhere. He was by no means
alone in his idea that it was not time to admit
Texas into the Union, but the minds of the
men of North Carolina, without regard to
poHtical affiliation, were set on holding their
own as regarded taking their slaves at will to
any part of the south-west, and neither
Clay nor his friends thought for a moment that
he would go unpunished politically for the
stand he took.

His visit was a continuous ovation; he stay-
ed at the home of Kenneth Rayner, son-in-
law of Colonel Polk, who lived in the old Polk
mansion. It was under one of the great trees,
said to be the white oak which stands in the
side yard of what lately was the home of Colo-
nel A. B. Andrews, that the famous letter was
written.

A young lady of Granville County presented
him while he was in Raleigh with a vest of silk,
spun, dyed and woven by her own hand, and

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 255

made up ready to be worn. This she begged
him to wear at his inauguration, the next
spring; and he graciously promised to do this
should he be elected. But Clay was never in-
augurated. He never attained the presidency.
James K. Polk, a Democrat from Tennessee,
but descended from the North Carolina family,
and a cousin of Colonel William Polk, was
elected, and President Tyler, wishing to in-
fluence history before he left the White House,
signed the bill admitting Texas to the Union,
action which precipitated the war withA/[exico
immediately.

President Polk went to the University of
North Carolina in 1845 to make the Com-
mencement address and passed throughRaleigh
at that time, making the first of our President-
visitors. Being North Carolina born, he was
received as a son of the State, and among his
party on the day he went to Chapel Hill was
Miss Jane Hawkins of Raleigh, besides many
gentlemen. President Buchanan, called the
''Sage of Kinderhook," gave an address at
Chapel Hill Commencement in 1859. He was
entertained by General L. O'B. Branch on his
return to Raleigh, and visited Nathaniel
Macon before leaving the State.

That great white oak, called the ''Hexry Clay Tree."
It is said to be the tallest oak in Raleigh, as well as
the most historic. It stands in the yard formerly be-
longing TO THE LATE CoLONEL A. B. AnDREWS

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 257

We must now tell of one of the grandsons
of the County who returned in 1860. It was
Joseph Lane, grandson of Jesse Lane^ one of
the less conspicuous brothers of Joel. He was
candidate for Vice-President with Brecken-
ridge, on the Whig ticket that year, and was
defeated. Joseph Lane's father, John Lane,
was born in Raleigh, but moved early to west-
ern North Carolina, where Joseph was born
in 180L As early as 1804 the whole family
had moved to Kentucky. By 1822 we find
young Joseph already a member of the Indiana
Legislature, barely past his majority, and a
farmer and trader, having founded his fortune
at a time when most boys are still dependent,
and in 1 845 when the Mexican War was declared
he volunteered as a private. He was almost
immediately raised from the ranks and soon be-
came a Colonel, and again a few months after
he was commissioned Brigadier-General. He
was third in commiand at Buena Vista, and
fought at Vera Cruz against Santa Anna.
He was the hero of Cerro Gordo, winning that
victory against heavy odds. He left the army
with the rank of Major-General.

Upon returning to Indiana after the Mexican
War, he was appointed Governor of Oregon

258 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Territory, and showed his bravery as an
Indian fighter. Thence he went to Congress
and waa named candidate with Breckenridge
in that four-sided campaign which resulted in
the election of Lincoln.

Franklin K. Lane, who was in President Wil-
son's Cabinet, was born in Prince Edward's
Island, and was not apparently of any kin-
ship to this man. This last was here during
the Great War and spoke before the State
Literature and Historical Association, as so
many celebrated men have done.

Speaking of the next celebrity who came to
Raleigh, we should mention the "Little Giant,"
Stephen A. Douglas, who had beaten Lincoln
in Illinois when elected Senator over him, but
whose candidacy was signalized by the celebra-
ted joint debate whereby Lincoln won the ears
of the country. Douglas was a wonderful ora-
tor and a most eminent man, and was one of the
candidates for the presidency in this troubled
transition year. Although a Western man
there are descendants of his in this State today.
After the war between the States was over,
after the assassination of Lincoln had given
Andrew Johnson a seat in the Presidential chair,

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 259

this son of Raleigh came back, not to be feast-
ed and toasted, for in those grim depleted
days there was not much festivity afoot, but
to fulfil the filial duty of seeing a monument
erected over his father's grave.

This monument stands today in the Old
City Cemetery, and the visit of President
Johnson furnished the occasion for the last of
those historical addresses which Governor
Swain wrote, and which are mines of informa-
tion about old times. This is the one in which
so many of the less conspicuous folk were
characterized, as he gave the scanty annals of
Jacob Johnson, the hostler at Casso's tavern,
and janitor at the State Bank near by.

Mrs. A. B. Andrews has described her visit
in company with her father, William Johnston
of Charlotte, to the White House during
Johnson's term, when her father removed his
political disabilities by taking the necessary
oath. She described the man and President,
medium in height, broad and stocky, with his
neat black dress, formal and somewhat stiff in
manners as of someone not too sure of himself.
He spoke to her of her name having the same
pronunciation as his own, but spelled differ-

260 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ently, and asked her from what part of North
Carolina she came. When she answered
''Charlotte," he said In so many words, ''I was
born In Raleigh, North Carolina." Johnson's
troubles grew more especially out of the kind-
ness he could not but feel for the land of his
birth and for his leniency, counted too great,
in those bitter times, by his party.

Our next Presidential visitor was Theodore
Roosevelt, who came to Raleigh many years
later, after Reconstruction, and after many
years of wholesome development had gone by
and the war of '61 and its troubles had receded
into that past time which will heal all things
— years after the centennial of the founding
of Raleigh had been celebrated, and after the
twentieth century was already several years
old. He attended the State Fair in 1905,
and October 19th of that year found the
usual fair-week crowd augmented agood deal by
the natural curiosity to see the President, then
in his prime, personally and politically, and
but just recently elected to the ofHce he held
after he had filled out McKInley's unexpired
term. He was a man full of virile force, of the
true joy of living, and with a hearty word and

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 261

flash of his famous teeth in a smile to everyone
who came to greet him.

North CaroHna had given him no electoral
vote, but she loved a strong, manly personal-
ity, a real man, and so she extended the warm-
est welcome she was capable of giving. He
came in over the Seaboard, and his train stood
the night outside the town, near Millbrook,
and pulled into the station next morning.

Roosevelt spent the whole day in the city,
riding in the procession to the fair-grounds,
making his address there, lunching on the
grounds, and then leaving town late that after-
noon over the Southern Railway. In reading
over the reporters' accounts of the sayings of
the President on this occasion we are struck
by the genial attitude he showed to life. He
noticed the children, the horses, the crowds,
the stir and the life of the occasion as though
he loved it all, and his favorite comment,
*'Dehghted," won the hearts of those who were
admitted to his presence.

The plain clothes men, who had charge of
his personal safety, had great difliculty in
keeping up with the rapid darting way in which

262 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

he turned In every direction where his vivid
interest attracted him.

Roosevelt was here again as private citizen
to speak on the subject of the Panama Caanl
some years after, and addressed a record-
breaking crowd in the Auditorium.

Honorable William Jennings Bryan has
been in Raleigh several times, and on at least
three occasions was a speaker invited. His
oratory was well known to our citizens.
Later, one of his daughters made her home
here for a time and her noted father was fre-
quently seen on our streets.

In the year 1911, Woodrow Wilson, soon to
become Democratic candidate for the Presi-
dency, came to Raleigh after the Commence-
ment at the University where he made a
memorable address. He was entertained by
the city and given a reception by the Capital
Club. He also spoke in Raleigh at that time,
and his speech, re-read today, gives a wonder-
ful forecast of his subjects on so many memor-
able occasions since, recommending so many
of the ideas then that he has always advocated
since, and advanced as needed reform meas-
ures. Its literary form is wonderful. He

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 263

mentioned on this first occasion the necessity
of young men espousing particular causes and
reforms, not as connected with or led by some
particular person, but as fundamental princi-
ples appealing to the eternal sense of justice
and righteousness.

The two Vice-Presidents, Sherman with
Taft, and Marshall with Wilson, were also
here at different times each during his official
term. Mr. Sherman, in a letter of apprecia-
tion of a reception given in his honor in
Raleigh, wrote, "It was a broadening of my
viewpoint of our Southern civilization and a
w^arming of the cockles of my heart towards a
people that I had not before so well known."
Mr. Marshall made one of the most genial,
modest and common-sense addresses imagin-
able, a speech full of kindly toleration, of
ready humor, and treating of the pressing
questions of the day in that broad and toler-
ant spirit in which alone they will find solution.

After mentioning our great poHtical and
governmental figures well known to history,
we must not omit those guests whose values
as they came to us were a little different, men
w^ho whatever their especial gift, came to us

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as literary lights, men who were brought here
to speak at the meetings of the State Literary
and Historical Association.

Edwin Markham, the poet, was one of the
earliest of these. The three most distin-
guished addresses were delivered in the year
1909 by James Bryce, Ambassador from Eng-
land, 1911 by Henry Cabot Lodge of Mas-
sachusetts, and in 1913 by Jules Jusserand,
Ambassador from. France.

Mr. Bryce is the author of the best book
which has ever been written on the workings
of the American Constitution. He was one
who did everything in his power to cement the
friendship of the two great powers of Anglo-
Saxon institutions. He was a small, alert
man, with dark piercing eyes and a most un-
English quickness of movement and appre-
hension and air of eager interest. His speech
was very rapid and perfectly distinct, and was
a part of his incisive personality. He was
in these days of almost universal clean shav-
ing, quite forested with a bush of white beard,
which seemed somehow electric, and to pro-
vide him with wireless tentacles connecting
with the outer world.

266 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Mr. Bryce has left behind him a charming
souvenir of his visit, for at his request, a finely
engraved, autographed portrait of King Ed-
ward VII of England was presented to the
State of North Carolina, and now hangs in
the Hall of History. This was an unusual
courtesy, for the King seldom gives a portrait
of himself, and did so this time in recognition
of the antiquity of North Carolina, the oldest
of the Thirteen, and thus the first settlement
England made in America, her earliest colony.

Henry Cabot Lodge, lost also in a thicket
of white beard, but bearing a colder eye, with
as intellectual an outlook on the world as Mr.
Bryce but with a fine New England conserva-
tive attitude toward his subject, gave us a
wonderfully written paper on the constitu-
tional development of the United States.
This address forms part of a volume which he
later printed on kindred subjects.

The French Ambassador, M. Jusserand, also
bearded, and with a dark scholarly counten-
ance, a savant as well as a diplomat of a high
type, gave from original French sources a de-
lightful account of the friendliness and ideal
conduct of the French and American troops

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 267

in their association during the Revolution. He
quoted Count Rochambeau, and officers with
him who were present at Yorktown and during
all the the glorious episode of that campaign.
M. Jusserand was complete master of English
as a written medium, but in his reading of his
address many were a little confused by the
persistence of his accent. William Howard
Taftwas also one of these speakers, during his
ex-president life. His smile and chuckle
were in fine working order.

During the Great War, there came to us
many French visitors, some, such as M.
Stephen Lausanne, sent by the AlHance
Francaise, but one party especially, represent-
ing the French High Commission, came on a
most interesting errand to the Southern States.

The Marquis de Courtevron and the Mar-
quis de Polignac, with their wives, one of
whom was an American lady, were making
this tour by reason of a hereditary connection.
General, the Prince de Polignac of the C. S.
Army, was the father of the A^Earquis de Cour-
tevron and the uncle of the Marquis de Polig-
nac. The older gentleman having been attach-
ed to the Southern Armies during the War of

268 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

'61, and having thus made bonds of affection
which had not been forgotten, his sons were
come to renew the association. These gentle-
men and ladles were our most charming and
memorable French visitors, and the so admir-
able spirit of war-time France was well rep-
resented by them.

General Tyson of the United States Army
spoke at the Literary and Historical Associa-
tion of 1919, giving a first hand account of the
glorious history of the breaking of the Hinden-
burg Line, accomplished by our Thirtieth
Division, first and bravest.

Dorothea DIx was a visitor to us more than
once in her beneficent journeys, and one is re-
minded of her in rounding out the list of our
guests and our honored speakers.

We must not omit the mention of another
woman of real significance, greater than any-
one can now determine. That she was a
woman, makes the significance all the greater.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the champion of
equal suffrage for women, the sane wholesome
magnetic woman who carried the banner all
down the years to assured if not to actual
victory, came here and spoke in the Commons

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 269

Hall, before the Legislature. She probably
represented, in her pioneer capacity, more in-
fluence on the coming development of the
world than any man of them all. Her sweet
reasonableness, her intellectual power, her
gift of real oratory, which made men say of
her that of all speakers who ever came to us,
she was the greatest, all these things should be
recorded of her.

She was elderly, rather stout, with a massive
face which lighted up into an indescribable
inspired look, and a voice when she spoke
which, while utterly womanly, had the search-
ing power that filled a hall, and tones and
echoes of sweetness that made the hearing an
unique experience. It was as though she
played on a wonderful musical instrument
with rare skill.

A woman fair-time orator was Miss Jeanette
Rankin, Representative from Alontana, who
spoke here during her term of office. She was
a phenomenon, rather than an event, but she
should be recorded. She was later killed,
politically, by the report that she wept as she
voted ''no" to the Declaration of War, which
was a ruse, rather than a true tale. Miss

270 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Rankin was a tall, self-possessed Western
woman who spoke well, to the gaping wonder-
ment of many a farmer who did not hold with
these "new fangled women-folks."

Long years after the war was over, and years
after his summons to the eternal rest, the ashes
of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confed-
eracy, were borne in state, from his far South-
ern interment near Beauvoir, Miss., to a more
glorious repose in his former Capital at Rich-
mond, Virginia.

During this solenm progress the remains
were halted to lie in state in the different
states which had owned his command during
that struggle. On 30th May, 1893, the coffin
was placed in the Rotunda of our Capitol,
there to be visited and venerated by those
who loved and remembered him and the cause
he represented.

All in this list, and many more, have breath-
ed our air, trod our soil, become part of us for
the time they remained with us, and brought
to us what they had of value and of informa-
tion and inspiration to bring.

In other lands, when we are shown a castle
or a palace, the distinguished guests, the visit-

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 271

ing sovereigns are enumerated, and by having
been there they add interest and prestige to
the house. So also should it be with a city,
and we should count it a glory to have enter-
tained so many visitors who are well known
for all sorts of honor and attainment.

CHAPTER XII
These Later Days

HERE is a development and a life
story to a nation as well as to an
individual, and as the noisy
and spacious times of the fifties
could only be likened to a young
man's exuberant youth, so after the Civil
War and its subsequent problems had sobered
our people in the sixties and early seventies,
and cramped their attention down to the stern
practicalities of life, and as further lapse of
time confirmed 'this attitude, we may be said
to have thus entered on our maturer man-
hood, speaking always of a nation as if it were
an individual.

Young folk are seldom concerned about
what has gone before them. It is not until
time has ripened their conceptions that they
want to study history, look up genealogy, and
reconstruct the lives of their forefathers.
The very young seldom occupy themselves
with old folk's tales. It is so with individuals ;
it is true of comxmonwealths; and it has been

[272]

THESE LATER DAYS 273

that way generally in North Carolina. It is
a rare and an unusual mind in the past which
has really wished to grope backward. When
WilHani L. Saunders began the research which
produced the Colonial Records on that tiny
first appropriation of five hundred dollars, he
was still well in advance of the sentiment of
his age. Only in the last fifty years have wq
faintly begun to insist upon building up a true
picture of the influences which have wrought
changes in our economic habits. For about
the sam.e period we have begun to predict the
development of the future in a serious mood.

Leafing the pages of ''before the war"
old periodicals one finds notices of m^any
beginnings of manufacturing in North Car-
olina, beside the home spinning, weaving and
dyeing, and the making of the various articles
needed in a simple rural society.

Quilts and spreads were an outlet to the art-
istry and love of color of women at the South^
as every where in the United States, in the days
when homemade carpets and simple furnishings
were the rule. These womanly arts were well
exemplified in weaving the coverlids which are
made by old patterns brought from overseas,

274 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

and handed down from mother to daughter.
These were very intricate and beautiful, and
the yarn was homespun cotton and wool mix-
ed, and home-dyed as well. Usually the wool
used in them was colored and the cotton left
uncolored, and many of these are treasured
today, among the antiques most prized.
Homespun cloth for men's clothing was dyed
w4th vegetable dyes in such a manner that
the colors never really faded, but only soften-
ed into more subdued tints. A wonderful
indigo, a good brown, a yellow and a soft
grey were among the best colors, while the
bright red and the black were brought in if any
was used.

Blacksmithing was rough, but the shoe-
making was wonderfully fine. This was taught
to slaves, as was also expert carpentry, and
other building trades. Some of the wooden
mouldings that occur, and some of the plaster
modeUng which centers and edges the cornice
of many old houses which have been care-
fully used, show the taste of the old folk
and capabilities of the negroes as well as do
their furniture and silverware.

There were wool hats made at some farms
in Wake County, and brought in for sale dur-

THESE LATER DAYS 275

ing court week, so that they were called
''County Court Hats." This is, of course, a
lost art, along with the greater part of the
other handicraft and basketry which is reviv-
ed and treasured nowadays.

Candle moulds and snuffer trays are interest-
ing features of every museum of antiquity,
and the sewing, when machines were still un-
known, was exquisite.

Cotton was raised in quantity after the in-
vention of the cotton gin, and early the idea
suggested itself that it might be manufactured
at home without the costly transportation of
raw material out, and of manufactured goods
back into the States. Many small mills are
to be noticed in the forties, and we find stated
in journals of the time that there were in
North Carolina in that day the quite respect-
able number of twenty-five cotton factories,
employing fifty thousand spindles and con-
suming fifteen thousand bales of cotton
yearly.

None of these factories were in Wake
County however. Gins there were, of course,
run at first by horse-power, and also the old-
fashioned horse-driven cotton presses, which

276 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

were often flanked with a heap of cotton seed
left to rot unused. Not always so, however, in
Wake County.

There was over near Rolesville, on Neuse
River, quite early in the nineteenth century,
one infant industry which was far ahead of its
time. Several citizens of Wake County have
recently given accounts of a cotton seed oil
mill there which pressed ten gallons of oil in a
day, and produced much oil-cake, in great
cheese shaped masses, as if taken from some-
thing Hke a cider-press. This oil-cake was
was fed to milch cows and considered fine to
increase their milk, while the oil is vaguely
stated to have been "taken to Raleigh."
What use it was put to there they did not
know. To dilute linseed oil, probably.

A few pianos were made in Raleigh before the
war by a man named Whitaker, and were very
good ones too, by the standards of the time.

The works were imported, and the cases
were made and mechanical parts installed and
adjusted here. One or two of these instruments
are still in existence to show their excellence.

This is not a matter of great importance in
the real progress of the city, but is told simply
to show that the tide was turning toward the

THESE LATER DAYS 277

making of things before the coming of the war
made necessary the manufacturing of articles
for subsistence.

There were formerly two successful paper
mills in Wake County. The first one was at
Milburnie, and was where a small stream came
into the main stream of the Neuse, because
clear water is necessary for making paper.
This first one was started by Joseph Gales, the
editor, for supplying his printing paper, and
was burned before the middle of the nine-
teenth century. The other was owned later at
Falls of Neuse, by the father of Dr. W. I. Roy-
sterand his brothers, and was dismantled when
Sherman's army was near, and the machinery
was hidden and saved. It is this massive
stone building that is today the major part of
the Neuse River Cotton Mill.

The inhabitants of Wake County before the
war were, nevertheless a most exclusively agri-
cultural society and did not use very advanced
methods. They had felt the lure of the West
in those days that swept out the younger,
more adventurous men, and the remaining
ones were not the eager spirits. Good farmers
there were, for as someone has said, there was

5 «

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THESE LATER DAYS 279

no need for a good farmer to move West. But
the pristine fertility of virgin land was used
up by the customary methods of exhaustion.
The new ground was cropped and turned out
as old field, to become a prey to gully-wash-
ing rains, or grow up in old field pine if circum-
stances were fortunate. New fields were con-
stantly cleared, and this was the wasteful
method all over the American continent at
some stage of its development, before the
need of conserving fertility was regarded.

The long-leaved pines of the south-eastern
portion of the county were soon stripped by
turpentine seekers and lumbermen, while the
hogs running out kept the young trees from
sprouting up. Fear of deep plowing was held
as a steadfast belief by farmers who had
brought these ideas with them from the sandy
country.

We will have to accord to the women a good
part of the sudden awakening to possibilities
of manufacture which came later in 1861.
During the War, the city and county became
a real hive of industry. The socks which were
knitted for the army by the good women every
where were a case in point. Even so late as

280 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the World War, when distributions were made
of wool for the Red Cross knitting, there were
found, all over the country, old ladies who
knew exactly what to do with their knitting
needles, who rejoiced that they could help
in their old age.

After they were taught the "Kitchener
Toe," and had been instructed in size of
needles, and number of stitches to cast on,
they industriously turned out socks by the
dozen pair. These old ladies would reminisce,
and tell of the sewing they had done for the
soldiers in their youth, when cut-out garments
were brought to them from Raleigh. Some
had made up the cloth for love, and some had
been obliged to ask for a little money. All
had had their part in the efficient organization
of industry at that time.

Powder was made near Raleigh during the
War and guncaps were manufactured by Keu-
ster and Smithurst. Cartridges were filled by
the children at the blind institution, by the deaf
and dumb, and the blind also, who could thus
do their bit. Matches and curry combs,
wooden saddle trees, and metal findings such
as spurs, belt buckles, and other things which

THESE LATER DAYS 281

could be stamped out, employed the hands of
women and boys and some spare negroes.
*'John Brown Pikes," those unique weapons,
were made here also.

Wooden shoes which could be worn by the
home folk, and thus saved the much needed
leather for the use of the army, were also made
in Raleigh and are remembered as having
been used by some of the wearers of this
clumsy footgear.

When the old Devereux house was pulled
down some years since to make way for the
development of Glenwood, two bolts of cotton
cloth were found under the roof, hidden and
forgotten. One of these may be seen in the Hall
of History, and while not woven in Raleigh,
it was made in the State during the War.

Thus the necessities of the conflict develop-
ed the hands and skill of both men and women,
and the people who had hitherto subsisted by
agriculture alone, found out that if an incen-
tive were given, compelling toward making a
start, they were capable of making many need-
ed things, and could become skilled workmen
in the doing of it.

282 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The Reconstruction period was a sad and
exasperatng interlude, and trailed its discour-
agement across a land where there was not
much beauty or thrift remaining visible to
the traveler over country roads, deep in mid-
summer dust or winter mud; but after the
citizens of North Carolina who had the right,
resumed the direction of affairs, there was
found a good deal to build upon. This was
not in material resources, for these were as
depleted as it is possible to imagine, but in
ideals, and in interest in several things pre-
viously carried on with success and efficiency.

The winter of discontent forebodes the
promise of spring. Agriculture, as soon as the
War was fairly over, made some beginning at
improvement, and the high price of cotton
induced farmers to raise all they could culti-
vate. I have been told of a farmer-boy near
Raleigh who had by some means raised a fine
colt for himself. When Sherman's men ap-
peared they appropriated the animal. As
they led it away the boy followed, and duly
turned up at headquarters asking payment
for his property. He was told that he might
have as many of the old broken-down army

THESE LATER DAYS 283

mules which he was shown in a vacant lot, as
he thought his horse was worth. Seeing here
an opportunity, he took away a string of
twenty of the least disabled ones, and by
means of this foresight had mules to cultivate
a large crop of cotton that summer, and sell-
ing at the high price of the first year after the
War he thus made his start.

Mr. Priestley Mangum, a farmer of Wake
County, finding that the washing out of gul-
lies and the channelling out of the fields on
his farm made so great a loss of surface soil
and fertility as to reduce his yield permanently,
attained one of those visions of simple ex-
pedients which, although they may seem very
plain to "hind-sight," have never been thought
out before. He found that by throwing up
ridges which followed the contour of the hill-
side, and at the same time maintained a slight
but continuous fall of level, he could thus con-
trol the water in its course, allowing it to drain
away slowly, and sink into the soil on its way.
These ridges, arranged at intervals on his hilly
fields, obviated washing, conserved moisture,
and did not interfere with customary cultiva-
tion.

THESE LATER DAYS 285

In a hilly country it had long been the cus-
tom to run the furrows horizontally around the
hill-sides, but a field cultivated after Mr.
Mangum's plan had attained the same object
more perfectly by its regular terraces made by
throwing up a very high ridge beside a deep
furrow and then smoothing it into shape with
a sort of wooden scraper after the soil was thus
heaped up. It was a simple expedient never
thought of before.

The first Professor of Agriculture at the
"State College," seeing the condition and the
necessity, showed how the labor of thro^wing
up these terraces could be lessened by turning
several furrows together to form the neces-
sary ridge by means of the plow. So when-
ever the terraces curl around the hillsides, and
the crops grow greener upon the ridges where
the soil is stirred deeper and is better drained,
we see a real contribution made to economics
by a plain man who used his wits to meet his
daily problems. This simple plan has been of
untold benefit, not only in Wake County where
it originated, but also has meant millions to
the whole red-clay country of the Piedmont
South.

286 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

After the first spurt toward improvement,
there supervened a long period of depression.
Cotton went down in price year by year. The
remaining lumber was cut down to the bare
soil as never before. Wake County had not
made any good beginning at restoration for
many years after the War.

In Raleigh there was a certain sum of money
which must be regularly spent there because
it was the Capital; but as Wake County was
neither rich nor level, and as its varieties in
soil made it hard to manage, because what
succeeded on one farm might not suit on an-
other, a good farmer could just make a living,
and a poor one went ever deeper in the mire.

Another time of emigration began, not so
much from the elder folk, or from the farms,
but from the ranks of bright young men, who
could go anywhere where larger rewards were
to be found for their labor.

It was during these pinching times that
there grew up at Cary, nine miles from
Raleigh, one of our most distinguished North
Carolinians, one who has not yet fully come
into his deserved fame. This was Walter
Page, born of a Wake County family, which

THESE LATER DAYS 287

had been here since early years, one of a num-
ber of brothers, all men more than ordinary
in ability, and recognized by them as being
the ablest of them all.

They agreed to give him the college educa-
tion which they did not all feel free to take in
this struggling time with fortunes to make.

This Walter Page found his mind busy with
the problems of the country he loved, where
his fathers had lived for generations.

He wondered why it was that men of good
minds and good characters, living under a de-
lightful climate, and with no worse soil than
was cultivated to advantage in many other
places, could exist with so little of hope and en-
couragement that life was but a servitude to
the average farmer. He could see the great
need of some change. His first business ven-
ture, in the eighties, was the publication of a
weekly newspaper in Raleigh. Although this
did not turn out a financial success, yet it
sowed much seed which has since come to
fruition. A circle of young men in Raleigh,
himself among them, talked over at length
this feeling of futility, this lack of real progress
in Wake County and outside. They found a

288 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

lack of specific information as to real condi-
tions and actual needs of the Southern country,
an uncertainty as to the economic questions
of southern life, to be one of the great defects
of the era. The old formulas did not fit the
new times. This coterie, this debating society
of young men, not only discussed problems,
but decided upon the remedy to suggest.

It is declared by those who watched the
signs of the times in these early eighties, that
never, until the Watauga Club and the State
Chronicle put it there, was the phrase ''indus-
trial education" ever set up in type in North
Carolina.

This Watauga Club, of which Walter Page
was one of the leading spirits, decided that
there should be an industrial school where
boys could receive a thorough A^ocational
training, fitting them for the task of subduing
material, whether it be wood, or metal or re-
fractory soil, and making it serve man's needs.
They talked the matter over thoroughly, and
decided to memorialize the Legislature in be-
half of such an institution.

The farmers of the State were prompt to
recognize that here was an opportunity.

THESE LATER DAYS 289

Under the leadership of EHas Carr, of Edge-
combe, afterwards Governor, and of L. L.
Polk, the editor of the Progressive Fanner^
they favored the idea but wished to have it
carried further.

They wanted the Land Scrip funds, which
came from the Federal Government and which
were used in an irrelevant manner by the Uni-
versity, to be added to the endowment al-
ready provided by the fertilizer tax.

Private subscription, a State contribution
of part of the Camp Mangum tract to the west
of town, and the generous donation of sixty
acres adjoining to Pullen Park, given by Mr.
Stanhope Pullen for a site, were assembled as
the assets of the new institution, after its in-
corporation was enacted. To this the Land
Scrip was a substantial addition.

It is an interesting item in connection with
the expanded idea of the Watauga Club, that
both Wake Forest and Davidson Colleges
were first started as industrial schools and as
soon were augmented into real colleges.

The first building erected at the Agricultural
and Mechanical College, as its official title
was first bestowed, was finished by Peniten-

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THESE LATER DAYS 291

tiary labor, and the institution was opened In
1890. It was first of all a place where our
boys could be taught to win a good livelihood
by some creative work.

In the same year was first felt the stirring
of the Impulse toward a beginning of manu-
factures, and money was subscribed to build
cotton mills, and after that a fertilizer factory.
It seems a long time that affairs had been stag-
nant before the changes began to come, but
when once Initiated, development has been
steady and much has been accomplished.
There Is as yet no stoppage of this steady de-
velopment, and It has brought about a wonder-
ful alteration In the look of things. Here and
there Is a farm run so efficiently as to be really
making the best of all conditions, while the
whole general practice of farming has Im-
proved wonderfully.

The coming of Rural Free Delivery has
been a great aid to the farmer who was suffi-
ciently educated to use the help lavished up-
on him so freely by the Federal and State
Departments of Agriculture.

Formerly a farmer had to go to Raleigh once
a week, seldom oftener, and would get his

292 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

mail. It was the exception if he took a paper.
Now and then a letter or a patent medicine
circular was about all he ever expected. He
might hear the news of the day as he stood
about the streets, and might return with a
feeling of the existence of a world outside, but
his wife and children got none of this. Life
was stagnant of interest for them. There was
now a wholesome change.

Newspapers and magazines became more
plentiful, and farmers could read something
that was of special interest to their rural life.
Now and then a boy would insist on going to
the Agricultural College, and contrary to the
predictions of the older folk, book farming was
found not so unsuccessful after all.

Factories were built in the good old North
Carolina fashion of placing them in country
surroundings, with rows of comfortable houses,
very much more livable, one would think, than
the loneliness of the one-horse farms whence
their workers were recruited. These factory
suburbs, with pleasant gardens to each little
home, are seen on several sides of Raleigh.

The spread of the plant of the State College
over the hills to the west goes on; a new build-

THESE LATER DAYS 293

ing or so breaks Into the skyline every year
as the boys keep coming; while the well culti-
vated acres of the College Farm extend fur-
ther, and the big cattle barns are almost at
Method. Here we see another outpost of
Raleigh.

In the town proper, inside the city limits,
the two older schools for girls, Saint Mary's
and Peace, with the newer Meredith College
(Baptist), bigger and more advanced in stand-
ard than either, make the school population of
Raleigh amount to thousands of young folk
each winter.

The State offices are growing greater each
year as the social service side of the govern-
ment reaches out more and more In influence
for good each year. We have had the State
Hospital for the Insane, and the institutions
for the blind, and for the colored deaf,
dumb and blind, for many years. There are
two colored schools for higher education, sup-
ported by Northern capital, and there Is at
Method a village of negroes and also an indus-
trial school for the colored race, both founded
by the generosity of one of their own people,
a man of means.

294 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

This city of Raleigh while it is not yet an
overgrown, swollen metropolis, is as pretty
and as pleasant looking, as busy and hopeful
a place today as any city of its size in the
United States.

Its people are the same that they ever have
been. Newcomers are made welcome to follow
our own ways. The homogeneity of society
in this city makes for the kindliest feeling
between all classes, and it is a town of homes,
of moderate fortunes, and of many children.

As you ride out on any of these thirteen
great highways that extend in every direction
like the spokes of a wheel, you find yourself in
a smiling country. One can ride for hundreds
of miles over the good roads of Wake County
without repeating a single mile.

Of the smaller towns which girdle the Coun-
ty round, there is Cary, birthplace of the
Pages, a small town before the War; Apex
seven miles further, which was also a small
village until the railroads made it a good sized
country town; Garner grown up on the South-
ern Railroad, as Apex on the Seaboard;
Zebulon and Wendell, sister towns with their
great rural High School buildings standing

THESE LATER DAYS 295

half way between them, and their streets of
pleasant homes, none over twenty years old.

Wake Forest has been a town since 1833,
when Wake Forest College began its benefi-
cent career, and now it has beside the college,
its own cotton factory, in its own country
suburb.

Other places have their factories and schools
also. Rolesville has not had a railroad to
build her up, and while perhaps the oldest
community outside Raleigh, has not increased
since the War. Fuquay Springs, where mineral
water attracted people for health, has become
a good tobacco market, and has grown rapidly
since the railroad came, while the water re-
mains as good as ever. They, too, have their
school building, as has Holly Springs. In
Cary the Rural Life High School dominates
the town as is fitting in Walter Page's old
home.

With churches and schools and farms and
factories, and descendants of those good old
families who came here to build our first civili-
zation, and with those like-minded who have
come in to help them and continue it, this
County of Wake is a most pleasant, whole-
some place in which to live.

296 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

As one young person who was forced to
move away from the old town of Raleigh quite
unwillingly was heard to say, '^Don't you
know that the finest people in the whole world
live right here in Raleigh?" And this world
is made up of folks far more than it is made up
of acres, or of climate or of resources or of
dollars.

Given the right folks, a place can be as
worth-while as one pleases.

North Carolina Society of the Colonial
Dames of America

Wake County Committee

Chairmen
Mrs. Spier Whitaker
Mrs. Elvira Worth Moffitt
Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews
Mrs. Franklin McNeill
Mrs. William Johnston Andrews

Secretaries
Mrs. Harry Loeb
Mrs. James J. Thomas
Mrs. Joseph Redington Chamberlain

Assistant Secretary
Miss Martha Hawkins Bailey

Treasurers
Mrs. Harry Loeb
Mrs. J. J. Thomas
Mrs. S. W. Brewer

Custodian of House in which President
Andrew Johnson was Born
Mrs. S. W. Brewer

[297]

298 WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE

Mrs. John Anderson

(Lucy Worth London)

*Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews

(Julia Martha Johnston)

♦Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews, Jr.

(Helen May Sharpies)

Mrs. Willl^m Johnston Andrews

(Augusta Webb Ford)

§Mrs. William H. Bagley

(Adelaide Ann Worth)

Miss Martha Hawkins Bailey
Mrs. Thomas Walter Bickett

(Fannie Yarborough)

Mrs. Samuel Waite Brewer

(Bessie Sarissa Felt)

Mrs. Richard S. Busbee

(Margaret Simons Clarkson)

♦Mrs. Baldy A. Cape hart

(Lucy Catherine Moore)

Mrs. Joseph Redington Chamberlain

(Hope Summerell)

♦Mrs. Walter Clark

(Susan Washington Graham)
Mrs. W. a. Graham Clark

(Pearl Chadwick Heck)

Mrs. Collier Cobb

(Mary Knox Gatlin)

*Deceased

§ Transferred to other Committees

WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE 299

Mrs. J. S. Cobb

(Jane Williams)

Mrs. James H. Gordon

(Betsey Louise London)

Mrs. Josephus Daniels

(Addie Worth Bagley)

Miss Sallie Dortch
Mrs. George Dix

(Janet Dortch)

Mrs. David I. Fort

(Elizabeth Robinson)

§Mrs. Leo Foster

(Mary Marshall Martin)

Miss Caroline Brevard Graham
Mrs. B. H. Griffin

(Margaret Smith)

Mrs. Hubert Haywood

(Emily Ryan Benbury)

Mrs. J. M. Heck

(Mattie A. Callendine)

Mrs. John W. Hinsdale

(Ellen Devereux)

Miss Mary Hilliard Hinton

♦Mrs. Alexander Q. Holladay

(Virginia Randolph Boiling)

Mrs. Erwin Allan Holt

(Mary Warren Davis)

♦Deceased

§ Transferred toother Committees

300 WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE

Mrs. Arm I stead Jones

(Nannie Branch)

♦Mrs. Garland Jones

(Florence Monterey Hill)

§Miss Mary Frances Jones
*Mrs. Paul Hinton Lee

(Ellen S. Tyson)

Miss Margaret Tyson Lee
♦Mrs. Augustus M. Lewis

(Sara Matilda Gorham)

Mrs. Harry Loeb

(Bessie Armistead Batchellor)

Mrs. Henry Armand London

(Bettie Louise Jackson)

Mrs. Henry M. London

(Mamie Elliot)

Mrs. Isaac Manning

(Mary Best Jones)

§Mrs William M. Marks

(Jane Hawkins Andrews)

§Mrs. William J. Martin

(Lizzie MacMillan)

§Mrs. Elvira W^orth Moffitt
(Elvira E. Worth)

Mrs. Ben W^ Moore

(Katherine Badger)

♦Deceased

§Transferred to other Committees

WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE 301

*Mrs. Montford McGehee

(Sarah Polk Badger)

Mrs. John Allan MacLean

(Eugenia Graham Clark)

Mrs. Franklin McNeill

(Jennie Elliot)

Mrs. James Kemp Plummer

(Lucy Williams Haywood)

Mrs. Edward W. Pou

(Carrie Haughton Ihrie)

IVIrs. Ivan Proctor

(Lucy Briggs Marriott)

Mrs. William E. Shipp

(Margaret Busbee)

Mrs. Walter M. Stearns

(Mary Haywood Fowle)

^Mrs. Frank Lincoln Stevens

(Adeline Chapman)

Mrs. Frank Morton Stronach

(Isabel Cameron Hay)

Mrs. George Syme

(Harriet Haywood)

Mrs. James J. Thomas
(Lula Olive Felt)

Mrs. Robert L. Thompson

(Annie Busbee)

"Deceased

{Transferred to other Committees

302 WAKE COUNTY COAIMITTEE

♦Mrs. Platt D. Walker

(Nettie Reid Covington)

Mrs. William L. Wall

(Annie Cameron Collins)

Mrs. Thurman Cary Wescott

(Daisy Holt Haywood)

♦Mrs. Spier Whitaker

(Fannie de Berniere Hooper)

§^Mrs. George Taylor Winston

(Caroline Sophia Taylor)

♦Mrs. William Alphonso W^ithers

(Elizabeth Witherspoon Daniel)

Mrs. Carl A. Woodruff

(Effie Hicks Hayw^ood)

Mrs. Edwin S. Yarborough

(Nellie Elliot)

♦Deceased

§Transferred to other Committees